


Back To You And Tennessee

by rippedgloves



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: (lmao i love that that's an existing tag), 1950s, 1960s, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drug Addiction, F/M, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Minor Character Death, Musician Harry, Musician Louis, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll, THIS IS ANGSTY OK JOHNNY CASH WAS A SAD MAN AND I AM A SAD WOMAN THIS IS WHAT WE DO, Violence, WALK THE LINE AU, i'm sorry for all the homophobia and slurs :(, the 50s were messed up, yes there's sex and yes it's graphic fyi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-13 23:07:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 57,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11195379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rippedgloves/pseuds/rippedgloves
Summary: Louis Tomlinson rises to rock and roll fame at age twenty three and is thrown into a life of luxury and excess, but being on stage isn’t easy for a boy who has always stuck to the side-lines, and Louis struggles to deal with his new fame as he joins the Grand Ole Opry and is sent out on tour with names like Liam Payne and Elvis Presley. His life takes a turn, however, when his childhood role model, Harry Styles, joins them on tour, and the two become closer than two men in the spotlight are allowed to be.-OR, the one where Louis is Johnny Cash and Harry is June Carter





	1. PROLOGUE

**Author's Note:**

> So. Here we are. 
> 
> It's been a little over a year since this fic started taking shape inside my head. It's the longest fic I have ever written, and the one it's taken me the longest to write, but I am also 100% in love with it. It's my baby. I never thought through the excruciating process that was writing it that I would come out of it loving the final result as much as I do.  
> And I can't believe it's over! I've spent so long working on this fic and have written and re written it so many times that it feels like it's a part of me now. 
> 
> It never would have happened without the support of my wonderful artist Leyre, who made an amazing mix for the fic (linked on first chapter) and the incredible graphics that go with every chapter. She's been insanely supportive and patient with me even when I went MIA for weeks and never finished anything in time. Hope everyone enjoys everything she made as much as I do.
> 
> I also have to thank Kayla, who's the best writer I know and the sweetest friend ever, who took the time to read over this mess of a fic and turned it into something readable. This fic never would have happened without her. Thank you, Kay, I love you to the fucking moon and back. 
> 
> And finally, thanks to everyone reading this, for giving my fic a chance. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. It was certainly a wild ride, but an extremely enjoyable one.  
> Please let me know what you think! Either in the comments here or on my tumblr @foxharryau! <3  
> Thanks for reading!!!

[fanmix](https://8tracks.com/starafterunlock/the-legend-of) by [Leyre](http://tangerinebaskets.tumblr.com/)

 

*

The cement wall is hard against his back, the cold seeping through the fabric of his dress jacket, settling into his bones.

It’s been hours. He can’t tell exactly how long because they took his watch, along with his shoelaces, and the chain he always wears around his neck. It’s the first time he’s taken it off for anything other than to shower, and his neck feels weird without it. Naked.

He’s still riding the last of the high, but it won’t be long before he comes down. His fingers are starting to twitch, ever so slightly, and there’s a dull thrumming in his temples, slowly spreading around his head. God, he could really use a drink right now.

He can hear steps right outside the cell, the sound of them mixing with the _thump, thump, thump_ of his heart, pounding in his ears. He’s no expert, but something tells him that regardless of the situation he’s gotten himself into, his heart should not be beating almost out of his chest while he’s lying down. He tries to will it to slow down, to no avail. The footsteps walk away, and Louis is left alone.

There are no windows in this cell, and the door isn’t barred, but a thick metal plate with a peephole. There’s a lamp on the wall behind him that blinks every so often, leaving him in almost complete darkness for moments at a time until it decides to work again. When that happens, the dim light that filters through the peephole washes over the first half of the room, and Louis’ shadow shifts, transforms, and he would swear his hair grows four inches, his shoulders broaden—he hears his own voice, morphing, deepening, a soft, cheerful melody filling his ears, lyrics at the tip of his tongue.

It’s only the drugs.

He shakes his head, closes his eyes, and by the time he opens them again, the lamp is back on, and Louis’ shadow has disappeared almost completely.

A voice in the back of his head keeps asking about Harry, but the high had been strong enough that he’s managed to ignore it so far, to focus on something else. It’s fading now, and the little voice keeps getting stronger. The same question, over and over again, and it makes Louis slam his fist against the wall because it doesn’t fucking matter what Harry thinks. Shouldn’t matter. That’s all done with, anyway.

And if there had been any chance, a sliver of hope of fixing things before, it’s definitely gone now. He wonders how long until the news hit the papers, the radio stations. How long until everyone in the country is hearing about what a fuck-up Louis Tomlinson is? He can’t help wondering what Harry will think when he hears, if he’ll shake his head, frown knowingly because he’d warned everyone that this was going to happen, and no one listened.

Especially Louis.

He hears footsteps outside his cell again, only this time they stop in front of the door. The peephole opens, but it’s too small to see anything but a pair of brown eyes staring at him.

“Tomlinson, you’re out of here,” the man says, his voice muffled by the sound of the clinking keys as he opens the door.

For a moment, Louis thinks that maybe it isn’t the end of the world, that maybe there’s a way he can get out of this one undamaged, and then he turns at the end of the corridor and there, on the other side of the glass door, is Harry.

 


	2. 1955

 

Louis is almost nineteen when he’s deployed, after four months of basic training that breeze by and leave him standing in front of a Waco CG 3-A feeling like he hasn’t learned a thing. He leaves America shaking in his boots, cheeks wet with fear and his hand clasped tightly in Stan’s, hoping it won’t be the last time he sees his adopted home.  

He’s just turned twenty-two when he’s discharged, underweight and scarred and having witnessed too many deaths for someone who was never in combat, a slight tremor in his hands unless he’s got them focused on something and a numb spot on his calf where a bullet entered.

Calvin salutes him as he gets on the plane, the last one standing from their squad, and Louis wishes he felt the urge to stay the way Cal does, because they owe it to their fallen friends to keep fighting, but Germany took his courage, his sense of morality and his best friend, and his loyalty no longer lies there. Louis salutes him, turns around and doesn’t look back.

Nevada is pleasantly warm compared to the harsh German winter and the biting winds and raw iciness of Russia, and Louis has never been so eager to call a place _home_ since he left England all those years ago.

His uncle is out when he gets out of the cab, but his girlfriend-turned-wife Sunny offers Louis homemade cookies that taste only slightly stale and leads him to his old room, smiling uncomfortably as she reveals the boxes piled up around his bed, as well as a desk, stacked with papers, positioned where Louis’ old bookcase used to be.

Half of the room has been painted a soft shade of yellow, somewhere between maize and mustard; the half that contains Louis’ things has been left with the old, chipped mauve paint that had long been there when Louis moved in.

“Eddie used it as his office for a while, now that the business has expanded and he has to work from home sometimes,” she explains, proudly, “but once the baby comes he’ll move his stuff to the garage and this will be the nursery.” She presses a hand to her stomach, a small bump showing as the dress clings to her figure, and smiles apologetically at Louis.

Louis doesn’t ask _what about me_ , because he knows. He wasn’t overly welcome twelve years ago when he was taken in by Eddie, and he surely isn’t now.

“He’ll be back in time for dinner, and you boys can talk business over drinks,” Sunny says, retreating towards the door. “I’m sure you’ll find a job in no time.”

He doesn’t have much to his name anymore, not that he ever did: he’s outgrown the clothes he’d left before his deployment, and the few books he’d saved from school when he quit at age fifteen have been given away in his absence. There’s nothing anchoring him to this house he’s reluctantly called his home for almost ten years now, and yet the idea of not belonging there any longer leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

Unpacking takes him less than fifteen minutes. He sorts his few clothes into three piles on top of the cardboard boxes around his bed, and then he finds his battered old journal, the one he’s kept at the bottom of his rucksack since Stan got shot. The leather is rough in the centre where it got tearstained, but even with all the squinting that he does as he examines it, he can’t find any blood stains. It’s probably his only possession that doesn’t have any, but he doesn’t stop to dwell on that.

A single picture falls out as he sets it down next to his Bible, and Eleanor’s wide brown eyes stare back at him, her smile almost faded where he constantly rubbed it with his fingernail during his time away.

He’s heard that Eleanor’s getting married by spring to some real estate magnate that did business with her dad. He’s got quite a few years on her, but he’s rich enough to pay off Eleanor’s family’s debts and take her away. It’s what Eleanor always wanted, it’s good for her, and Louis should be happy for her, but—

He rips the picture in four, sticking the remains underneath one of the boxes and resolutely not picturing himself walking down the aisle with a girl he never loved.

Last, at the bottom of his bag, is the issue of _Keep Rockin’_ he had managed to snag from one of his mates from training, dated February 10th, 1950. Harry Styles’ face smiles up at him when he sets it down, a picture he’s seen a thousand times since he left home. There’s an article on Harry’s seventeenth birthday and his upcoming record, with exclusive details of his very public romance with his long-term girlfriend Elizabeth (whom Louis only knows from her role in National Velvet). He has read it so many times he could probably recite it word by word now, how Harry had dinner with Eleanor Lambert on his birthday and that he and Elizabeth are planning on moving in together once Harry’s of age.

It hits him, as he shrugs off his uniform to take a shower, that Harry Styles’ album has been out for almost three years now, and he hasn’t heard it yet. He and Elizabeth are probably married, might have a baby or two by now. Hell, Harry Styles could be dead, for all he knows.

The thought alone makes him shudder, but he makes a mental note to find out about him as he steps under the soft spray of warm water. He rolls his shoulders back and forth as the water hits him, his tight muscles slowly relaxing, and he almost lets out a sob at how good it feels to scrub himself with the creamy, flowery soap that Sunny left for him.

He’s painfully aware of the contrast between this and the cold showers they got to take outdoors if they wanted to bathe every day, back in Germany, and how he’d started out doing it daily, then stopped as the winter approached and more of his brothers fell to sickness around him.

When he finally goes to bed, it’s on clean sheets and an old mattress that, in all its faded glory, still beats every surface Louis has slept on in the past three years, and he can barely hold back the tears when he buries his head in the pillows and realizes that the nights of huddling together for warmth and hoping he doesn’t wake up with pneumonia are finally over.

 

*

Louis gets a job as a bartender at the pub down the street; it takes him a week, during which his uncle keeps his mouth shut but shakes his head in disappointment when Louis mentions all the jobs he didn’t get. He doesn’t seem too pleased that it’s not an office job, once Louis makes the announcement that he’s starting the following day, but the pay is good, so Eddie keeps his comments mostly to himself, pursing his lips and looking away from Louis whenever it’s brought up.

It’s an easy job, except on Thursdays and Fridays, when the pub has local bands play after sunset and the crowds from all the other bars in town drag themselves in to see the show. Louis gets to pick the music during his shift, and most of their customers are regulars, as easy and well-tempered as you would expect from a small town bar.

It’s a week after he’s gotten the job that Louis meets Danielle, and he’s immediately taken with her. She walks into the bar after it’s already filled up, joined by three friends who immediately find their way to the group of men Louis’ been rolling his eyes about all night.

She makes eye contact with him twice as she skirts around the room in a long raspberry dress, moving to the music and smiling at him in a way that makes it impossible for Louis to take his eyes off of her.

“Dashing, isn’t she?” James whispers in his ear as he leans in to pick a glass from the cabinet in front of Louis. “Yet no one seems to be good enough for her.”

“Does she come often?” Louis finds himself asking, his eyes still trailing after her as she stops to make conversation with Thelma, one of their older regulars.

“Sometimes, when her friends are in between boyfriends and manage to drag her down.”

“Does _she_ have a boyfriend?” She turns around and offers Louis a small smile before turning back to talk to Thelma.

“No one knows. Maybe. Maybe she’s not interested in one. The Campbell women are a complicated bunch, let me tell you that.”

Louis is about to ask what her name is when James moves away to serve someone down the bar, and Louis looks up to find her standing in front of him, all flushed cheeks and long eyelashes, Louis’ eyes drifting down to her red lips almost automatically.

“Hullo,” he says, offering her the smile he uses on his customers and trying to keep his cool as she smiles widely at him.

“I think,” she says, her bright green eyes focused on him, “you should buy me a drink.”

“Ah,” Louis replies, smiling easily, “see, normally, I would, but I’m working, so I’m not allowed to buy any drinks or the boss will be on me.” He quickly glances over his shoulder. “I suppose I could just pour this beer and say, forget it, perhaps, right here?” He places the drink in front of her and winks.

“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” she says, batting her eyelashes. “I’m Danielle.”

Louis grabs her hand and brings it to his lips to press barely-there kiss to the back. “An absolute pleasure. M’name’s Louis.”

“And tell me, Louis,” she says, big eyes and a coy smile, “what’s an English man like you doing over here?”

He takes a deep breath, orders the thoughts in his head so it all adds up, and launches into the story he’s repeated so many times it’s almost become his own.

Danielle is a nice girl. Her eyes are Louis’ favourite shade of green and she’s got plump dark lips that are constantly stretched around her wide smile as she laughs loudly and unabashedly at every single one of Louis’ jokes. She’s quick with her comebacks and has a good sense of humour, keeps Louis on his toes with her sharp questions masqueraded with shrugs and easy smiles.

She’s also sprawled all over the backseat of Eddie’s Old Clipper by the end of the night, breathing loudly into his ear while Louis’ got one hand down her knickers and the other one cupping her breast. It’s not how he expected his first time to be, but Danielle is eager, warm and inviting with her shy smiles and soft moans, and Louis figures it could have gone much worse.

He drops her off at her folks’ house two hours past her curfew, but she lets him finger her once again before she gets out of the car, kisses him full on the mouth and whispers her goodbyes, and Louis drives home smelling of her and unable to shake the grin off his face.

*

A week after he meets Danielle, he starts writing music again.

It’s not that he ever really consciously stopped, but between training and his deployment and his guitar being tossed out of the cargo hold before they took off in Atlanta, he didn’t get a lot of chances to write. He still remembers the way his superior had laughed at him for thinking he’d be allowed to bring a guitar to war, and his expression when Louis had pointed out that the war was over. Back then, Louis had done nothing but grit his teeth and nod as he was called naïve and stupid, his hands balled into fists so tightly he could feel his fingernails digging into his palm hard enough to draw blood.  

He would still hum under his breath, late at night when the rest of the lads were already asleep, or write down a line or two on the only notebook he managed to hold onto after their quarter flooded their last week in Germany and they lost half of their possessions.  

It had been Stan’s fault, for not securing the sand bags correctly, and the Sergeant had made him sleep outside three nights in a row, by the end of which he had caught a chest infection. At the time everyone was coughing and sniffling more often than not, so no one worried too much at first, even when Stan grew a shade paler every day and would sometimes shake so violently on the field that he would drop his rifle. Louis hadn’t made the connection, too worried about keeping his feet dry and his body in one piece to really dwell on the fact that Stan was not doing so soundly.

Most soldiers don’t die on the battlefield, someone had told Louis back in training, when the idea of actually pointing a rifle at someone and shooting seemed so unreal Louis felt like they were playing a kids’ game. Soldiers die of disease, they had said. They starve to death. They freeze.

“You’ll be in the fox hole, boy, huddled against the rest of your unit, and y’all will be shaking in fear when you hear the troops advancing. And there’ll be shots, and bangs, and explosions going off, and in between all of that you’ll notice that one of your buddies, the one that was having difficulty breathing, has stopped moving, his eyes are closed, and you won’t even have the time to check his heartbeat because you’ll have to fight for your own life. That’s how soldiers die, boy.”

Louis had shrugged it off. They wouldn’t really be in combat, that’s what they’d been told. The War was over; this was supposed to be child’s play compared to what his superiors had been through.

In the end, it had happened almost exactly like that. They’d been in a spider hole, and technically only one person was supposed to fit per hole, but Stan had been weak and feverish and could barely stand on his own, so Louis had pulled him towards him and hauled him all the way to his own hole. It was a tight fit, but they were skinny enough after months of rationing that it wasn’t too bad. They’d grown used to being uncomfortable long before that.

An explosion had gone off somewhere on the field, and he’d felt Stan whimpering besides him. To this day, he can remember Stan’s hand blindly finding his, holding on tightly, clammy and weirdly warm in the cold German winter. Stan had tried to say something, but Louis had shushed him; he had nodded and pressed his forehead to Louis’ shoulder and Louis had squeezed his hand, and there was another explosion, this time to their right, an endless string of screams following.

Stan had started shaking harder, to the point where Louis had to press him against the wall of the hole so that their heads wouldn’t bang.

“C’mon, Stanley, I need you to focus here. We’re moving to Russia tomorrow, they’ll have doctors there, it’ll get better. We just have to get through this one night,” he had said, confidently, regardless of the lies coming out of his mouth. There hadn’t been any doctors thus far, so he had stopped expecting them.

It had been minutes, or perhaps hours, time stretching infinitely as Stan wailed in agony and shook against the dirt wall, sweat dripping down his forehead. Louis had held him, shushing him, promising things he knew would never happen, until Stan had gone limp and his hand had slipped out of Louis’ and the soft puffs off his breath against Louis’ cheek ceased completely. Only then had Louis screamed.

So Louis meets Danielle, he shags Danielle, and all of a sudden he’s writing songs again. He tells her one night, after she gets off his lap, not bothering to put her panties back before lying on his chest and lighting up, pressing a kiss right over his heart and saying she would like to hear one. Louis nods, but doesn’t say yes, just like he doesn’t mention that all of his songs are about war and death and loss. She wouldn’t want to listen to that.

He’ll fall in love with her, and he’ll write love songs about her, about the roundness of her breasts and the warmth of her mouth and the way his chest tickles whenever she’s around. She’d probably love something like that, Louis thinks. Once they fall in love, he’ll write her the songs that she deserves, and she’ll be happy. They’ll be happy.

*

It’s not that Louis wants to live with her, exactly; he doesn’t think three months is a reasonable amount of dating time to decide one should move in with their girlfriend, but Eddie and Sunny’s baby is due any day now and money’s too tight to afford rent on his own, and Danielle’s dad offered them a really good deal. Danielle says she’ll decorate, maybe even get her Grandma to let her have her old piano and set up a music room in the back for Louis, and it doesn’t seem like he has any other choice.

He was surprised when Danielle’s had dad brought it up, more of an order than a suggestion, after Sunday Mass. But Danielle is the youngest of four, and her sister Mary ran off with a sales assistant after a year of unhappy marriage, so he believed it when Danielle told him that her dad doesn’t care about societal expectations all that much anymore. He’s heard rumours, too, about a Campbell boy who took off with a gang of artists years ago, before Louis even left town, and no one knew the specifics, but whispers about alternative lifestyles and sins explained why there were no pictures of him at Danielle’s home and why they all pretended the Campbells had only ever had daughters.

Mr. Campbell signs the contract before Louis has even agreed to it, and he tells them to tell everyone they’re married and it’ll be fine, and just like that, it’s settled.

They move in right before the end of summer. Louis gives Danielle a ring so that no one will ask questions; her eyes widen in surprise and Louis sees the muted hope in them, the edge of disappointment when Louis says, “Your dad says it’s best if we start wearing them now,” and nothing else, but he can’t bring himself to feel guilty, because he didn’t ask for any of this.

They argue about the colour of the walls, and whether or not they should get a dog, and which bathroom should be used for guests, but the day they officially move into the house, after weeks of moving around furniture and fighting, the September weather hasn’t begun cooling and Danielle wears a green dress that hits above her knees. It makes Louis bend her over the kitchen table, lift up her dress and press his face between her cheeks. She yelps, startled, but doesn’t push him off when he lets his tongue slip over the fabric of her underwear.

It’s not ideal, but it’s the first time Louis has had a place to call his own. For the first time in his life, he’s got someone to come home to, and he goes to bed with a warm, full belly every night, and he _know_ s it could be worse. He tells himself it’s the suddenness of it all, the learning of his new life that’s stopping him from feeling the warmth he’d always imagined when he’d thought about having a family; he wills himself to sleep picturing what it’ll feel like once he gets used to it, once _Danielle_ and _home_ start meaning the same thing in his head.

*

Money is tight the first few months, but Danielle is sweet about it: she learns to cook cheaper meals and doesn’t pressure Louis to work longer hours, even though sometimes Louis catches her frowning when he heads to the music room after dinner.

He’s aware that they haven’t spent that much time together, that the idea of living together included much more sex and cuddling than the reality has turned out to, but Louis works six days a week at the pub and teaches guitar to one of the neighbourhood kids every other day, and the point of the new house was that it’d give him time to work on his music, so he does.

He finishes the first song he deems good enough a week before Thanksgiving. Niall has been playing with him after closing hours, messing about with his guitar, teaching him some tricks he picked up from a cousin who lives in Ireland and cracking a joke whenever Louis’ brooding moods begin to creep up.

They get wasted that day; Niall insists that they celebrate and carefully pours them a mix of all the liquor on the shelf—a way to drink for free and go unnoticed that he had learned from the old bartender, the one that Louis is replacing now.

He stumbles into bed when he gets home that night, giggling as his hand lands next to Danielle’s head, almost smacking her in the face.

“Sorry, love,” he whispers in her ear, licking down her throat, “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Danielle groans but spreads her legs when he slides his hand between them, rubbing at her gently as he bites down on her throat. He’s got her gasping before him, rocking back against his hand in no time. It never takes long, getting her wet for him, and she’s always eager to let Louis inside her. She would probably make a good wife, Louis thinks, if he were ever going to marry someone.

*

Songs come pouring out after that. It’s after they’ve got about ten on paper, after weeks of endless arguments and drunken, sleepless nights rehearsing until their fingers bleed, that Niall convinces Louis that they should be recorded.

“I know you have this—this inferiority complex—maybe because you’re the oldest child.” Niall scratches at his head, taking a sip from his beer, and he doesn’t seem to notice the way Louis’ eyes go dark at that, the tightness of his lips. “Or maybe it’s just the way you are, I don’t know, but you’re _good_ , Louis, our music is good and there’s something about your voice, your words. People should get to listen to you.”

“Who could possibly care about what a bartender has to say? After the wars, with all the people out there with much more interesting stories to tell—why would anyone want to hear mine?”

“Because,” Niall says, tapping on Louis’ forehead with two fingers, “you’ve got—a thing, a sound, it’s different. You’re something else, something we haven’t heard before.”

“And how am I supposed to get anyone to listen?”

Niall grins at him, taking a sip from his drink. “I’ve got a friend who works at a radio station, and he’s got friends. Don’t worry about it, man, you’re _good_. Everyone is going to want you.”

*

It’s easier than expected, which is something that hasn’t really happened before in Louis’ life, and it makes him wary, too suspicious to believe it’s truly happening, even as he finds himself bent over a table, staring at a record contract.

It was less than a week after their conversation that Niall had shown up late to his shift announcing that they had to pick four songs from their repertoire to play to his friend, Jacob, who had a good ear for music and a lot of friends in the industry. Louis didn’t know what _the industry_ could possibly mean in a town with no telephone line, but he was shocked enough that he agreed without much thought.

After closing, they had spent that night celebrating: Niall let him finish the last Lucky they could afford, and Louis was warm with beer and the single shot of whiskey the owner, Mal, let them have on the house, that he let himself start pondering the idea that this whole music thing might not be a hobby, after all.

It took them all night, but by the time that the sun was creeping over the horizon and Louis was crawling into bed next to a displeased looking Danielle, they’d decided on “Late Night Blues,” “Before Kazan,” “Silent Nights” and “Red Cherry Lips.” Louis had fought tooth and nail for “The Loser Walks Home,” but Niall claimed it was too political, too controversial, and he had to drop it, even though he wanted to argue that “Before Kazan” was considerably more political, and definitely more controversial. Niall thought “Before Kazan” was romantic, hopeful, if slightly sad, which meant that he didn’t get the point of it at all. Not that anyone else would, anyway.

Jacob had come down from Los Angeles four days later, because he had a gig in Reno, and he could make the time, he’d said, and besides, it was always nice to find new talent and see their potential. Louis wondered what he would really get out of it, how close he and Niall could possibly be that this man would spend the time and money it cost to get down to see them, but the prospect of a possible record deal was enough to dim his suspicions for the time being.

Three weeks after his visit, Jacob introduces them to Paul, who lets Louis play half of the first song before he’s interrupting him to pull out a stack of papers from his bag, which is how Louis finds himself staring at a mock recording contract.

Paul is quick to tell them that bands do not sell, not right now, that they’re looking for a one man show, and that Niall will have to fade to the background or be replaced by someone willing to give up stardom for a career in the shadows of the true star. Louis tries to protest, albeit weakly, but Niall is quick to assure them that he’s happy to stand back and let Louis be the centre of attention.

It’s all happened so fast that they’ve never discussed it, Louis realizes, and he wonders if Niall is truly okay with the choice that he’s making or if he’s simply afraid of letting go of this opportunity. His sensible side tells him they should talk about this, but the excitement in Niall’s eyes and the compelling looks Jacob and Paul are both giving him are enough to make him shove all concerns to the back of his head and sign his name on the dotted line.

He doesn’t tell Danielle, and it nags at him, gives him an itch that he can’t get rid of every time he sets his eyes on her, but he still chooses to keep his mouth shut.

It would make things easier on both of them, he knows, if he told her that he’s going to make more money and that the music that she called pointless more than once is now going to give them a better lifestyle. It’d feel good, he knows, to prove her wrong, to see the realization dawn on her and have her admit that she was wrong, but Louis doesn’t feel ready to share this with her quite yet.

 


	3. 1956

The producer, Sam, tells him to lie about it, once he _goes big_. People love a good struggle, he says.

“Play it up, make it sound like you’ve had a hard time, like music saved you.” He winks at Louis, offering him a flute of champagne, a celebration of having recorded their first song.

Louis nods, keeping his eyes on the glass, and resolutely doesn’t mention Luca, or moving across the ocean, or Germany, or watching Stan shiver to death in front of him. He downs it in one go, blames the dryness of the drink for the way his throat tightens, but his lips don’t quiver and he manages to keep a straight face as Sam smiles knowingly at him.

“Find your sob story, Tomlinson, and everyone will love you.”

Louis swallows the knot in his throat and nods again, moving behind Sam to refill his champagne flute. He notices his hand shaking slightly, swirling the bubbling contents around, and it surprises him, because it’s been awhile since that’s happened.

He empties the glass within a minute of refilling it, then gets a new one, and Niall shoots him a worried look but Louis offers him his practiced grin, the one he uses on Danielle most of the time, and Niall nods, smiling back.

He loves Niall, has found a better friend in him than he ever thought he would, but somehow the idea of explaining himself to him feels too risky, exposing the part of him he wishes he could hide away forever.

*

Louis is drunk that night when he gets home. His hands are shaky, the way they first were when he stepped off the plane eight months ago, and something in the air feels off.

Danielle’s still up, which is the first odd thing he notices when he walks into their room. The bed is made, and she’s still wearing her day clothes, a pale yellow dress that she got from Sunny when it stopped fitting her.

An unpleasant feeling settles in his stomach, icy and thick. Cold dread spreads through his limbs. He looks at her face, searching for any sign of distress, but there are no tear stains on her cheeks and no sadness in her eyes.

“Lou!” Her entire face lights up when she sets her eyes on him. “The doctor called, we’re with baby!”

His blood turns ice cold, his entire body frozen in place.

“Louis, we’re having a baby!” Danielle throws herself at him, and he stumbles backwards, his arms failing to wrap around her.

“We oughta celebrate,” she says, kissing him full on the mouth, “before I’m too pregnant to do this.”

She pushes him onto his back on the bed, her hands fumbling to get his pants down, biting at his throat as one of her hands snakes into his underwear and closes around him, tugging at him hard, twice. His body responds automatically, hardening under her touch, but he’s too numb to even kiss her back when she goes for his lips, has to think about how to close his mouth around her nipple when she shoves her breasts in his face, grabbing Louis’ hand and guiding it between her legs. She presses one of his fingers inside right away; it’s met with resistance, but she slides one of her own along with it, and after a moment of shifting she starts rocking against their fingers, and Louis manages to get control of his hand and add another, moving them in and out as he circles his thumb against her clit the way she taught him.

It feels unfitting, celebrating this mess the way they created it, but Louis doesn’t say that. He doesn’t tell Danielle that he doesn’t want to be a dad, doesn’t know how he could be ever a good one when all he’s known in his life is pain, how his kid is supposed to like him when he doesn’t even like himself.  

As if she’s read his mind, Danielle whispers, “You’re going to make a great dad.”

She clenches around him and bites his jaw and Louis comes with a shudder, turning his face when Danielle tries to kiss him, locking his lips on her throat and ignoring the taste of bile on his tongue.

*

The next day, Louis goes through the motions mindlessly, unable to think about anything but the kid growing inside Danielle that he knows he should love but can’t help but feel detached from. He wonders, idly, if maybe being in love with Danielle would help with loving his child. Maybe it will come with time, he thinks, and he’ll learn to love his girl and their baby the way he always thought he would when he finally found a family to call his own.

He doesn’t come out from the music room until it’s time to head to the bar for his shift, and when he does, he can barely utter more than a couple words at Danielle, feeling like she can see right through his mask.

Louis makes the two mile walk to work in a mindless state, unsure of which roads he took and how he managed to not get run over, and Niall takes one look at him and silently passes him the beer he’s just poured, no questions asked.

It’s later, when the bar has closed and they’ve finished mopping the floor, Louis lets himself talk about it.

“Do you want to have kids of your own, one day?”

“Me? I don’t know, mate, I’m not really a family man,” Niall answers easily, shrugging and taking a sip from his Lucky. “I guess if I found the right gal, probably, if she wanted to. You know how girls get like.”

 _Don’t I know it_ , Louis thinks, and sips his bourbon—it was a good night, they made double the tips they usually do, and Louis needed this tonight. He won’t be worrying about money soon enough, anyway, so he doesn’t let himself feel guilty about it for a change.

“Has Danielle started pestering you about it?” Niall asks, noticing Louis’ sullen mood.  

“Sort of, yeah,” he says, and then, because the weight of it is bearing him down: “She’s pregnant.”

Niall stays still for a moment, unresponsive, then snaps his head to look at Louis, mouth parted, looking as shocked as Louis feels.

“Wow. Um, congratulations?”

“Cheers,” Louis says bitterly, and lifts his glass in Niall’s direction before downing what’s left of it in one gulp.

“So how are you feeling?” Niall asks, frowning. “Excited?”

“Yeah,” he says, and then, “No.”

“Lou—shit, man. That’s—that blows. What are you going to do?”

Louis laughs bitterly at the question; as if he had a choice in any of this. “What are my options here? She’s pregnant, she’s having a baby. Not much I can do about it.”

“Well, I mean—you could, you know, just leave. It’s not like you’re actually ma—“

“I’m not leaving her now, Niall. What kind of—what? How could you suggest that? She’s a nice girl! I would—it would ruin her life!”

Niall looks ashamed for a moment, before he schools his expression into seriousness.

“I’m sorry, I’m just—you should see yourself,” he says, gesturing to Louis with one hand, “You look miserable, Lou. I thought—I thought someone had died, when I saw you walk in today.”

“It’ll be alright,” Louis says, though it doesn’t feel like it will. “I’ll get used to it, come to terms with it, yeah? I’m just surprised.”

“I guess,” Niall says, but his brow is still furrowed. “You’ve got months until the baby comes.”

Louis nods, and reaches for the bottle of bourbon one more time, but the unease doesn’t go away and by the time he gets home and sneaks into bed he feels as lost and exhausted as he did when he left the house.

*

It’s the day that they finish their record—once the producers has sent them home and Louis’ is drunk on Niall’s couch instead of at home with his girl, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his head fuzzy enough—that he finally asks about Harry Styles.

“Did he ever marry that girl? That Taylor girl?”

“Elizabeth? Oh no, they broke it off ages ago, I believe, months before their wedding. Styles is a proper ladies man now, people say he might be even more popular with the dames than Jimmy Dean is.”

“I always thought he’d be married with children by now.”

“Think about him much, huh?” Niall asks, an eyebrow raised and a gentle tug to his lips. His eyes are glistening, but there’s an edge to his voice, and Louis wonders if there’s more meaning to Niall’s words than a playful jab between friends.

“We just— we grew up listening to the Twists, you know? Ma used to like ‘em, the gospel songs. And then after—after the war started.”

He doesn’t mention Lucas, doesn’t mention that his favourite song was “Harry & Gemma’s Summer Lullaby,” doesn’t mention how he sat by Luke’s side and sang it over and over again while he watched his brother bleed to death.

“You’re his fan!” Niall exclaims, his eyes softening. “That’s adorable. Wait until you listen to his new stuff—it’ll blow your mind.”

“So he’s still making music?”

“He was in a coupla movies, but I’m fairly sure music’s his main thing now. He’s got two or three records out already. He even did—him and his sister, the pretty one—“

“Gemma?”

“That’s the one! They did a Christmas song together, some charity thing for veterans. It was quite nice.”

Louis doesn’t know how to interpret the surge of pride that fills his chest, and he swallows it down, forces it out of the way as he takes a long sip of his scotch and cola and avoids Niall’s eyes.

“Well, who knows, maybe once you get big you’ll get to meet him,” Niall says, winking, and something inside Louis clicks.

He can’t stop thinking about Harry Styles after that. Money is still too tight for him to be able to go out and buy his record, but he lets himself wander into the only music store in town the day after his talk with Niall, and he walks around the store until he finds what he’s looking for, Harry Styles’ _Summer Stars_ , which is priced 3.99 in a shiny red label, three dollars too much for Louis to even contemplate buying it.

He itches to listen to it, the memory of Styles’ teenage voice faded and distorted in his head, too close to his own after years of singing himself to sleep to drown the sounds of the war right outside his tent.

The cover is black and white, classy, a single picture of Styles staring straight into the camera, crisp white collared shirt and a ribbon tie that Louis suspects was probably red before it got immortalized in monochrome. He looks older than Louis remembers him, than he looks in all the pictures in his magazine, the ones he’s committed to memory, but there’s still innocence in his easy smile and the way his eyes crinkle as they stare straight into the camera. He somehow looks exactly the way Louis pictured he would, with slightly longer hair slicked back, childhood curls tucked neatly away, but Louis still finds himself surprised by him, captivated by the depth of his eyes, and the way his lips look full and almost red, even in black and white.

Louis aches to hear his voice, wonders how much it’s changed in the years Louis’ been absent, if he sounds like a grown man now.

The shop clerk seems to notice that Louis has been staring at that album for too long, because he comes over, a friendly smile on his face.

“Big fan?” he asks, and Louis nods, “His new album is coming out soon. Gonna hit the radio next Tuesday.”

“Think it’ll be any good?”

“If it’s half as good as this one,” the man says, tapping the record on Louis’ hands, “it’ll blow everyone’s mind.”

He walks away, and Louis lets himself stare at Harry’s face for one more minute before putting it away, but then impulse hits him and he rushes to the register, shoving four crumpled ones on the counter and heading out of the shop before he can regret his decision.

Danielle is almost always home, which makes it tricky for Louis to sneak the record in, and it takes two weeks before she decides to go out on one of Louis’ rare days off and he’s able to pull it out from where he hid it in the music room and give it a listen.

Harry’s voice still has the raspy quality Louis remembers from his teenage years, but his sound is more mature. He’s steered away from the religious themes that used to be the focus of his music, back in the day, but most of his songs aren’t about love, like it happens with most musicians, these days.

It’s different than what Louis is used to, somehow both hopeful and melancholic, and even the faster, lighter songs leave him breathless. He finishes listening to the record, nursing a cold beer, and has to start it over, trying to memorize the lyrics, to burn the sound of Harry’s voice into his brain to replace the old Gospel songs that never fail to remind him of home.

He puts the record back after the third listen, not wanting to risk Danielle coming home and finding him like this, and he makes a mental note to take it to Niall’s next time they get together to jam, even if it will end with Niall mocking him, because he’s not done with Harry Styles just yet.

*

The call comes on a Tuesday afternoon when Louis is keeping Niall company at the bar after his shift has ended. Danielle has been unbearable with baby talk and planning for the future and urging Louis to stop spending so much time holed up writing music, so Louis has turned to spending most of his free time at the bar.

Mal calls him over behind the counter, and Louis is almost hopeful that he’ll offer him an extra shift, so maybe that way Danielle will stop bugging him about money and they’ll be able to afford more than the four meals they keep rotating week after week. The bar is empty, though, and Niall has been sitting most of his shift, not enough costumers for even one bartender, let alone two, and Louis approaches him nervously, frowning when Mal silently hands him the phone and walks away.

Danielle is sobbing into the speaker when he puts it to his ear, and it takes him a moment to understand, the words _baby_ and _gone_ whimpered in between cries. His blood runs cold the moment realization hits him, a sudden ache spreading through his chest, and he hangs up and heads out the door without a word.

He finds a bag full of baby clothes by the front porch, a pair of tiny white shoes propped on top of it.

Danielle won’t talk to him, but Louis doesn’t know what he’d say, even if she would, so instead he wraps his arm around her and lets her cry into his chest.

*

He doesn’t know how it happens, but suddenly they’re on the radio, and his life is flipped upside down.

Danielle is still heartbroken about the baby, keeps insisting they try again, but Louis is too distracted by the newness of his musical success to properly comfort her; he keeps feeding her excuses, each one less genuine than the last, for why they should wait, but with every passing day he can feel himself less invested in her, and somehow not even her pain from the loss of the baby is enough to make Louis focus on her.

The thing is, he’s more upset about the miscarriage than he thought he would be; he still hadn’t wrapped his mind around her pregnancy by the time they got the news, but it hit him regardless, and he’s been carrying this hollow space in his chest since. Seeing Danielle doesn’t help, with her red rimmed eyes and empty smiles, a constant reminder of what they lost, and he hates knowing that he’s causing her more pain, but it’s not enough for him to do something about it. He can feel them growing apart, and every passing day makes it harder to remember what it was about her that had him so enthralled when they first met.

He brings it up with Niall the day after they get their first check from Cal and they quit the bar, and Niall gives him a typical Niall answer, which is to shrug.

“You can force these things,” he says solemnly. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Can’t blame yourself for not falling in love with her.”

“She lost her baby and now she’s losing me, too,” Louis insists. “I just feel like an ass.”

“That’s because you are one, pal,” Niall says and snickers. “And too full of yourself, too. Maybe she’ll be better off without you, anyway. Sorry to tell you this, but you ain’t that great.”

He doesn’t know how to bring it up with Danielle, how to suggest that maybe they should take a break, but between meetings with the label and plans for the record release, it somehow slips to the back of his mind. He’s never really home, anyway, so it doesn’t make a big difference.

They get into a fight the day he tells her about the record, once his name is being mentioned on the radio enough that he can’t keep it hidden anymore, and she’s livid that he’s kept it a secret from her for so long, but he manages to calm her down once he tells her how much money he’ll be making off of it, how much better off they’re going to be now.

The release party isn’t huge, and no big names show up, but a picture of them still makes it into the paper, Danielle all dolled up and smiling for the camera, all pain from their lost baby hidden away, and Louis’ plan to let her go is forgotten as he’s swept into his new life.

*

When Louis finally meets Harry Styles, it’s nothing like he thought it would go.

He’s imagined this quite a few times, in the solitude of his bunk while in Germany, during the cold nights spent in tents before they moved to Russia, and sometimes while Danielle slept next to him, when making music was nothing more than a dream and not something he could see himself doing as a career. He’s pictured himself stuttering, shaking Harry’s hand as the man leaves the stage, opening the door for him at a restaurant, driving him to the airport in a service car.

They’ve just joined the Grand Ole Opry, and it’s their kick-off show in Nashville, and Louis is so nervous he’s already been sick twice.

Niall told him Styles would be here weeks ago, but was insistent that since this is Louis’ first show, he won’t really be able to frolic with the rest of the talent. He’ll be expected to stand backstage and keep to himself, earn his place in the tour.

In the end, it’s nothing like that.

Elvis hands him a beer and offers him a cigar, which Louis declines, before vanishing towards his dressing room with a giggling pair of girls who appear to be sisters. He spends about half an hour reluctantly talking politics and music with Jerry Lee, and eventually finds his spot next to Liam Payne, who apparently has been keeping an eye on him since he started out. Louis doesn’t mention that it’s not exactly hard to keep up with his career when he’s only been around for a few months, and Liam seems delighted when Louis tells him that he loves “Gone, Gone, Gone,” going on and on about the girl who inspired it.

There’s no trace of Harry Styles anywhere up until the announcer calls out his name as the next performer, and Louis sees Harry rushing towards him with flushed cheeks and bare feet. Louis is so surprised by the sight of him—his long slender legs and the red ribbon around the collar of his shirt—that he fails to move out of the way as Styles tries to squeeze past him.

They crash.

Louis is expecting a scowl, maybe some yelling, but once he’s made sure neither of them are going to fall over and he manages to look up, he finds Styles smiling with ease, seemingly unbothered.

“Oops,” he says, looking down at Louis and making him painfully aware of their proximity. “You’re Louis Tomlinson.”

“Hi,” Louis responds, willing his features into what he hopes is a friendly smile. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“I’m Harry.”

“I know,” Louis replies and automatically wants to slap himself, but Harry laughs, and his smile widens even more.

“Was hoping to meet you tonight,” Harry says easily, smiling as he attempts to free Louis from where his tie has gotten tangled with Harry’s guitar strap, “Though I gotta say, I didn’t think it’d happen like this.”

“Likewise,” Louis says, lost for words, and Harry laughs.

“Heard you’re heading out on tour soon,” he says, and Louis nods stiffly. “Hope to catch one of your shows before I head out myself.”

They manage to separate before Harry says anything else, Louis stumbling backwards from the force of the yank as Harry pulls his strap free, and Harry nods in salute as he starts walking away.

“I love your song, by the way, ‘Before Kazan?’ I thought the lyrics were lovely.” Louis can feel his smile falter, and then Harry adds, “and quite heart breaking.”

He steps on stage with that, still barefoot, looking over his shoulder one last time to smile at Louis before setting his eyes on the audience.

“Guess who I just met backstage? Louis Tomlinson, what a star.”

Louis smiles to himself at that, almost unable to believe that Harry Styles is talking about him to a theatre full of people.

“He’s got some good songs, that man,” Harry says into the mic, and Louis can’t see his face from this angle but can tell that he’s grinning, somehow. “Have y’all been listening to his record? It’s one of the good ones.”

Louis feels himself blush, and he’s grateful there’s no one around to witness it, because he doesn’t think he’d be able to explain his reaction if asked.  

“I was so star struck I even forgot my socks,” Harry jokes, and strums his guitar. “Maybe I’ll play one of his songs next time, what do y’all think?”

The crowd cheers so loud it startles Louis, even all the way backstage, and pride surges in his chest. He lets himself imagine it, just for a moment, Harry Styles on stage, crisp shirt and grey tux pants, singing Louis’ deepest feelings, his voice raspy and rough in that way that Louis hasn’t heard before and that still makes his heart stutter sometimes when he hears it.

“Yeah, I think I might do that,” Harry says to the audience, and starts strumming a simple, flowy beat. “For now, why don’t we start with mine?”

*

Everything seems to blur together after that.

Louis sees his name in headlines, next to Big Names that feel too grand to be printed next to his own.

He rents a house in Memphis, because he’s in the South but it’s the wrong South, and “ain’t nobody building a career in Nevada, boy.” Niall goes with him, and he promises to fly Danielle out as soon as they start making money, chastely kissing her goodbye and pretending not to see the disappointment in her eyes as he drives away from the home she tried to build with him.

Jerry Lee calls him to get a drink a few times and he gets along grandly with Niall, and Louis finds himself hanging out with people he’s used to seeing on billboards.

He meets Marlon Brando at an auction his manager makes him attend, and Clark Gable the week after that, at some show business party in Las Vegas. Before he knows it, people he knows from billboards are approaching _him_ to say hello, praising his music, and Louis doesn’t really know what to do with the attention, was never the best at talking to people, really, but it still makes his chest fill with pride.

They book their first full tour by the end of ’56, after Liam calls Louis up and tells him they’ve already added his name to the line-up, so he has to go. It’s a three part tour, spread between South, East and West, and it’ll go on for over six months.

Danielle isn’t pleased about it, going on and on about their plans to start a family, but Louis moves her to Memphis and she’s got her nice house, new car and fancy dresses, and by the time Louis kisses her goodbye to step on the bus the day they leave fo tour, she smiles sweetly and tells him that she’s proud of him.


	4. 1957

 

 

 

Louis throws up right before the first show, drains his insides into the toilet bowl while Niall runs the sink so no one will hear him and promises him that it’s alright, that it’s normal, that no one really cares.

He steps on stage with his face shiny with sweat and his fringe plastered to his forehead, but he goes through the entire show without messing up and doesn’t even feel nauseous until he’s about to step off the stage and he glances back at the audience, taking in the crowd that, just minutes ago, watched him pour his heart out.

It happens again right before the second show, only Niall isn’t there to help him, or coddle him, and when he gets out of the bathroom he’s met with Sophia, Liam’s girlfriend, who looks knowingly at him and smiles in a way that can only mean trouble.

Every one of their crew and their mothers know about Louis’ stage fright by the fourth show; Elvis thinks it’s hilarious, Liam that Louis is unprofessional, and Carl that he’s outright weak. They don’t say it to his face, but they’re all easy to read, and Louis may not be the most observant person in the world, but if there’s one thing he’s discovered being on tour, it’s that men are loud, and they’re even louder when they’re drunk.

They’re somewhere in Tennessee when Jerry Lee pulls him aside after sound-check and asks him if he’s going to throw up.

He’s been feeling alright most of the day, but something has been gnawing at his chest since he stepped outside with Niall for a smoke and saw the line outside, looping around the corner with people waiting to see them play.

Louis shrugs, and Jerry smiles. “I might have a solution for you.” He pulls out a small plastic bag about the size of a date, a red string tied around it to secure its contents, which, Louis notes, is nothing but white powder.

His eyes widen despite himself; he knows people do drugs on tour, powders and pills and smokes. He’s heard of it. He’s heard Elvis talk about his benders and has had to listen to Liam complain about them, so he’s not completely clueless about the contents of the bag, but watching Jerry shake it around before opening it still feels like a scene taken out of someone else’s life.

“Is that—”

“It’s like doing a shot to take the edge off,” Jerry says, grinning. “Liquid courage, yeah? Except this one isn’t liquid.”

Jerry laughs at his own joke, then scrapes some of the powder with his nail and sniffs it up. He closes his eyes, then sniffs a few more times and shakes his head before opening them again. When he looks over at Louis, his eyes are darker, a little glassy, and his grin is even wider than before.

“Your turn,” he says, and hands Louis the bag.

Thoughtlessly, Louis dips his finger in the powder and brings it to his lips, licking it up, while Jerry stares knowingly at him, nodding his head. The taste is almost bitter, but not quite, and leaves a metallic trace after it’s swallowed, reminding Louis faintly of blood.

“The taste isn’t as strong when it’s up your nose,” Jerry offers, reading his expression. “Want me to walk you through it?”

Before he can stop himself, Louis nods.

“You wanna take a small amount, yeah? Not too much that it’ll go to your head too fast, but enough to get you going. You’ve got a key around? It’ll be easier that way, since you keep your nails short.”

Louis digs inside the pocket of his dress jacket and finds the key to his hotel room.

“We use bills, for the most part, but there’s no time for a proper spread out, ain’t got any books to set the lines on,” Jerry says as he takes the key and dips it in the powder. “You take it up to your nose like this, yeah? Don’t breathe or you’ll blow it all away. Bring it in so it’s almost inside your nose, then just—”

He snorts it up, closing his eyes one more time, and when he finally looks back at Louis, his irises have almost completely disappeared around his pupils.

“Yeah,” Jerry says one more time, and it takes a moment for Louis to realize that Jerry’s offering him the key. “Just do as I did.”

Louis stares at Jerry’s reddened cheeks and blown pupils, then back at the bag holding the coke, and before he’s even made a decision, he feels himself reach for the bag and scoop a small bump with the tip of the key.

Resolutely avoiding Jerry’s eyes, he brings the key up to his nose and breathes it in, letting it burn its way up his nose. He doesn’t realize he’s closed his eyes until he opens them again and the world feels like it has tilted, somehow. He looks over at Jerry, who’s grinning at him, and he goes to smile back before noticing that his lips are already stretched around his teeth, so he laughs, instead, and shakes his head. “Wow.”

“Yeah, there ya go,” Jerry laughs, and puts his arm Louis, pulling him close. “There you go.”

He feels like he’s on top of the world that night when he steps on stage. He doesn’t stumble over his lyrics or mess up any notes on his guitar, and as soon as the show is over, Niall throws himself at him, wrapping tightly around him and yelling in his ear that he’s the man.

*

Louis thinks maybe that was all he needed, one fix to get it out of his system, but he walks into Elvis’ dressing room the next night with legs soft like jelly and his stomach threatening to empty its contents all over the floor. He spots Jerry there, and he relaxes, sitting next to him on the carpeted floor with a Lone Star in his hand, waiting until Elvis and Carl are eventually called on stage.

“I need more of what you got me yesterday,” Louis says, apprehensively, as soon as they’re left alone.

“No can do, I’m afraid,” Jerry says solemnly. “Tour rules. No cocaine allowed anymore. Carl yelled at me and everything.”

 _There goes that,_ Louis thinks, as his stomach clenches uncomfortably.

“I could give you something else, if what you need is to take the edge off,” Jerry offers. “Not as fun as powder, yeah, but still a pretty good kick, overall. Surely beats being sober. Even better if you take it with whiskey, but that’s up to you, man.”

“What is it?”

Jerry smiles, and digs a small metal box from his tweed jacket, placing it in Louis’ hand.

“Johnny, meet your new best friend,” he says and winks, before turning to leave the room. “One at a time, Tomlinson! And remember to drink water.”

He takes one hours before the show, to try it out. It’s not immediate, not the way it was with the coke, and it’s missing the euphoria factor, but it’s something. He feels the knots in his stomach unclench and notices after a while that he’s stopped drumming his fingers, and it’s not too bad, he thinks, to feel a little less sometimes.

*

They get booked for a new tour as soon as the first one ends. They get less than ten days of break in between, but summer is almost over, anyway.

Louis flies home and showers Danielle in presents and lets her blow him in the back seat of the car he bought her, and it seems to be enough attention that she doesn’t press it when Louis doesn’t try to have sex with her.

Maybe she’s still upset about losing the baby, Louis figures, but he doesn’t bring it up in fear that it’ll give her ideas and she’ll start trying to get pregnant again. Instead, he comes into her fist and in her mouth and uses his hand to get her off, fingers fast as when he’s strumming his guitar, and he spends most of his days in the music room and away from her.

He gets a call two days before he’s meant to leave again, and Paul tells him, quite excitedly, that they’ve finally booked Harry Styles to join the tour with them.

It shakes him to his core, the knowledge that he’ll be sharing close quarters with Harry, who’s been such a constant in his life despite not being in it at all; he finds himself thinking about little else as he prepares for tour, and paying little-to-no attention to Danielle.

No one seems to know when he’s coming, Louis finds out when the tour kicks off in Memphis. Everyone is aware of Harry Styles being the newest addition to the lineup, but _when_ is a mystery. Louis stresses over it, planning conversations in his head and coming up with different scenarios in which he gets to impress Harry Styles.

Everyone but him has played or toured with Harry before; they know them from parties or events or just from growing up rich and famous in New York. Even Niall seems to share a few friends with him, has hung out with Harry once or twice in his youth, and it isn’t that Louis’ jealous, per se, but it makes him feel out of sorts, in a way. A little reminder that he doesn’t really belong here.

Harry Styles finally joins them on October 6th, 1957, three weeks into the tour. It’s been almost a year since their first meeting, and Louis is as nervous as he was that day backstage, even with two of Jerry’s pills already well into his system.

He doesn’t get a chance to see him before the show, because Niall calls him to his hotel room to discuss a change he wants to do on one of the songs that night, but Louis stands behind the stage and watches Harry’s whole set with stars in his eyes, waiting anxiously for the moment he gets Harry alone, hoping to make a better impression than the first time around.

“Louis Tomlinson!” Harry says upon spotting him, after he steps off stage, and wraps an arm around him automatically. “Good to see you.”

“Good show, mate,” Louis says, fighting to keep his voice even.

“Thanks. It’s been a while, I missed it.” Harry offers him a dashing smile, and Louis feels his throat dry up. “You’re up next, aren’t you? Looking forward to hear you play.”

The show that night is one of their best ones, if the cheers of the crowd are anything to go by, but Louis’ mind is somewhere else. He looks over his shoulder twice, towards the side of the stage, and spots Harry’s wild dark curls, half hidden behind the red curtain.

He doesn’t join everyone for their usual drink at Elvis’ room that night, and instead heads outside with a cigarette he nicked off Carl, hoping it’ll help him take the edge off. He’d run out of pills this morning, which means he’s hardly going to sleep tonight, not unless he gets a fix somewhere else.

He sees Harry, sitting on the steps by the fire exit, bundled up in a thick wool jacket even though it’s almost summer, eyes fixed on the sky. For a moment, Louis debates heading back inside, but he’s still too riled up from the show and the knot in his stomach since he first saw Harry earlier that day hasn’t dissipated, so instead he lets the door slam behind him to let Harry know he’s there.

“Hey Lou,” Harry greets when he spots him, and Louis takes it as an invitation to move closer.

“Hiya.”

“You killed it out there tonight,” Harry says with a smile.

Louis feels his face go hot, but he smiles back, somewhat bashfully, and mutters a _thank you._ Then, a little louder, “So did you.”

“First night’s always the hardest.” Harry shrugs, undoing the first button of his jacket. “But there’s nothing to compare it to, so I can’t really beat myself up about it.”

Louis wants to tell him that’s bullshit, but he doesn’t have the nerve—he doubts Harry’s given a bad performance in his life, not with that voice, and face, and charm. Personally, Louis thinks Harry was astounding, but then again, Louis is biased: he clearly has a soft spot for the young man.

“Got a whole tour to beat yourself up about,” Louis jokes, and kicks Harry’s boot with his shoe, earning a grin.

Louis looks around the empty lot for a moment, surveying his possibilities, then takes a deep breath and looks back to Harry, who’s still smiling at him.

“Would you like to get—do you want to go for a night cap with me?” he asks, rubbing his palms over his thighs to keep them steady. “Sleep doesn’t come easy after a show.”

Harry’s grin widens, splitting his face in half, and he nods, his eyes glistening. “I’d really like that.”

*

“So how did it happen?” Harry asks around a sip of his beer–his second one, Louis notes. “What was your jump into stardom like?”

Louis laughs, rolling his eyes. “Not as glamorous as yours, probably.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Harry says, and shrugs. “I was three when we did our first record as The Twists. I hardly remember it.”

It’s not news—Louis knew this, but resentment still simmers quietly in his stomach as the words reach his ears, “Of course,” he says, and laughs. “Let’s assume it was awful, then—I bet they didn’t even serve caviar.”

Harry frowns, only for a moment, and then bursts into laughter. “Of course they didn’t! Can you believe that? Absolutely outrageous. Only canned cranberries and tuna casserole.”

The memory of huddling together with Lucas over a can of mashed greens one Christmas when rationing had gotten particularly strict creeps its way to the front of Louis’ mind, and suddenly Harry’s words feel like a stab in the chest. It’s Louis’ fault for expecting anything else from a rich boy like him, but the disappointment still seeps deep into his bones.

“Yeah,” he mutters, absently, the sour taste crisp on his tongue, and Harry’s eyebrows knit together.

“I hate caviar, anyway,” he says after a moment, and hands him a beer that Louis didn’t notice him ordering. Louis gulps down half of the can in one go, the metal sharp against his lips as he presses down against it to stop himself from saying something.

“I try not to make insensitive comments,” Harry adds while Louis is still drinking, “but I guess I still mess up, sometimes.”

It’s not an apology, but Louis thinks an apology would make him feel worse, so he shrugs. “S’alright,” he says, waving his hand in Harry’s direction. “Not your fault you’re a spoiled rich boy.”

There’s bitterness in his tone, and Louis knows from the way Harry’s eyebrows twitch that he picks up on it, but he doesn’t react, smiling and nodding instead. “I’m learning, though.”

He knocks his can against Louis’ before taking a sip, bumping his elbow to Louis’ after and smiling. The tension in Louis’ shoulders dissipates, and he smiles back despite himself, taking another sip of beer to drown the fluttering in his stomach as his eyes meet Harry’s open gaze.

“Thanks for coming out with me,” Harry says, and Louis’ chest tightens painfully. “I don’t—I don’t get to do this often.”

“How come?” Louis asks, his mind flashing back to all the articles about Harry’s wit and endless charm, about the ladies throwing themselves at their feet. “Didn’t they name you the Red Apple’s Heart a few years back? Figured people would be sweatin’ to hang with ya.”

“You’d think, yeah?” Harry says, and looks down.

It’s quiet between them for a moment, and the longer the silence stretches, the more Louis wonders if he said the wrong thing, if maybe it’s too soon to be taking jabs at Harry. It’s hard to remember that they don’t really know each other, that as much of a constant as Harry has been in his life, they’ve only just met each other. He wonders why it is that he’s only good with words when they’re pouring from a pen and followed by a beat.

“People tend to—when they know you from the pictures and the radio, when all they know about you comes from badly quoted magazines, they expect something, you know? And the _me_ that those magazines show isn’t the person I am—at least not the person I want to be.”

Louis nods, guilt building in his stomach as he wonders how much of his conception of Harry comes from magazines, how much comes from his music, and how much he simply built up in his head when he needed something to hold on to, to keep himself together.

“People always want you to be the version of yourself that fits them best,” Louis states quietly, avoiding Harry’s eyes.

“That’s it, yeah? And when you don’t fit those expectations they just toss you to the side.”

“Has that happened a lot?”

“I grew up surrounded by socialites, Lou,” Harry says, and Louis tries his best not to cringe at the nickname, hates himself for liking the way it rolls out of Harry’s mouth. “Those people don’t want friends, they want pawns, and tools. I just got tired of being both.”

*

It becomes a thing, getting a drink with Harry every night, after everyone’s went to bed or gone out partying.

They still show up for post-show drinks with the rest of the lads –and whatever girlfriends have joined them for the week—but they wait until everyone’s scattered before silently slipping away somewhere quiet, where they can talk.  

It’s an unspoken agreement that they develop: a quiet spot; a cold drink; and a couple traded truths. Louis shares stories with Harry that he doesn’t remember ever saying out loud, some memories so old he needs to really focus to make sure he gets the details right. Sometimes he makes a mistake, and tells Harry one of the dozen stories he’s made up about his past, having then to backtrack and correct himself, taking a couple tries until he gets it right.

“I wanted to ask you something,” Harry says one afternoon, breaking the silence.

They have an odd day off, and he and Harry have been out on the roof with a case of beer for quite a while, but they’ve mostly kept quiet, staring at the city before them as the sun sets behind it.

“Okay,” Louis says, nodding solemnly and slowly lifting his beer as an invitation, ignoring his heart hammering wildly against his chest.

“Your song—the new single, yeah? ‘Scarlett Farewell.’ I read an article saying it was about a girl. Your high school sweetheart, they said. About leaving for the army and coming back to find her gone but it just—“

“Yeah?”

“It didn’t really hit me as a love song,” Harry said. “I never—I didn’t think it was about a girl, that’s all.”

Louis swallows around the lump in his throat and forces himself to keep his eyes open, red stained sheets flashing through his head even as tries to keep his focus on Harry. “It isn’t,” he manages to choke out.

“I’m sorry—you don’t. You don’t have to tell me about it.”

Louis nods, and sighs, and takes a long sip from his beer before talking again.  “They used to call me William, back in England, you know? Little Billy.”

It’s almost dark enough that he can’t make out Harry’s features properly, but even with his eyes on the horizon, Louis knows that Harry’s attention is on him.

“It was really hard at first, when I came here, because everyone always called me Lou but that—that was my brother.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother,” Harry says and sets his beer down, angling his body so that he’s looking at Louis instead of the sunset.

“I was ten, when it happened,” Louis starts, the words scratching the way up his throat after having been shoved down for years. “We had a farm in England, yeah? Me and the fam, we all took care of it. Lucas was the most help, because he was older, and he was built much bigger than me. He could help dad with all the heavy equipment, you know?”

Harry nods, but doesn’t offer anything, and Louis wonders if Harry’s ever even seen farm equipment, if growing up in a big city in a whirlwind of fame and luxury means his reality never intersected with Louis’ before now, means he has no idea what it’s like for most people, who grow up on nothing but potatoes and good will.

“I was supposed to be helping him in the wood shop; winter was close and we had nowhere near enough firewood to get us through. It’s not an easy job to keep six children fed and warm, yeah? I was supposed to be helping him, but it was the warmest day in a long time, and we could use the fish, so he told me I should go down the river, you know? Surprise my Pa with some fish—“

He pauses, forces himself to take a deep breath even though his lungs are burning, and he itches for the pills he left in his jacket downstairs, but he promised himself wouldn’t take them in front of Harry.

“He was covered in blood when I walked through the door, lying on my bed, his eyes unfocused, paler than he’d ever been. Dad kept shaking my shoulder, asking, _‘Where’ve you been,_ ’ and he wouldn’t let me get close, wouldn’t let me hold his hand, even though he kept calling for me, and he looked so scared.”

Harry places a hand on Louis’ knee and squeezes, leaves it there two seconds too long and Louis is painfully aware of every moment they’re touching until Harry finally pulls away.

“He was in pain right until he wasn’t. And then he was gone. Didn’t get a moment’s peace until his heart stopped beating, my hand pressed tight against his chest.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry says, his voice hoarse. “Shit, Louis, that’s—I don’t even know what to say.”

Louis shrugs, and keeps talking. “They sent me away about a month after that. Said they couldn’t afford to feed that many kids. Neither of them were brave enough to tell me they just didn’t want me. ‘s how I made it to Nevada, you know, with Eddie, who didn’t really want me, either, but he took care of me, at least.”

He doesn’t say anything after that, and they sit there in silence, time stretching between them, until Harry’s hand finds his and tangles their fingers together tightly.

“You say they didn’t want you—” he says, and he sounds furious, “but they didn’t deserve you. What they did—God, Louis. You’re so much better than what you got from them. You deserve so much better than that.”

Louis wants to disagree with him, but Harry’s hand in his is making it hard for him to focus on anything else, and he doesn’t trust his voice enough to speak, so he lets it be, and instead lets himself enjoy the heat radiating from Harry’s body as the sun goes down and they huddle together to keep warm.

*

It’s a few days later that they make it to Maryland, and Harry’s family comes to the show. Louis gives him space, and doesn’t look for him, assuming he will want to spent time with them, but he’s in his dressing room that night after the show when there’s a knock on the door, and he opens it to find Harry smiling shyly at him.

“I figured you’d be out for dinner with your family,” he says.

“I actually—I wanted you to meet my mom and sister, or, well, I wanted them to meet you, actually,” Harry says, his voice barely audible, and blushes.

It’s only then that Louis notices the two women standing behind him, both in matching gold dresses and pumps, their hair styled similarly enough that Louis thinks they could pass as sisters, if it weren’t for the age difference.

“Lovely to meet you,” Louis says, taking Anne’s hand between both of his and kissing her cheek, “and you.”

“I have to say, Chad and I are big fans of that song of yours, Up in the North,” Gemma says, smiling at him. “He always turns the volume up when it comes on the radio. I think I might get him your record for the holidays.”

“Give me your address and I’ll send you a copy,” Louis replies easily, his chest bursting with joy.

“Oh, there’s no need for you to do that, darling,” Anne says. “I won’t let my daughter take advantage of your friendliness.”

“I can always get your address off of Harry, you know?” Louis jokes, and both Anne and Gemma laugh.

“Is that Elvis?” Gemma asks then, “I haven’t seen him in ages, Harry, let’s go say hi.”

Louis is left alone with Anne, who is smiling warmly at him, but Louis notices the calculating look in her eyes.

“I’m glad Harry has found such a good friend in you,” she says after a moment. “Thank you for keeping my son company—he doesn’t have that many friends in the music business.”

Something uncomfortable sets in his stomach, and the need to get out of there is suddenly all Louis can focus on. “It’s my pleasure,” he says, without meeting her eyes. “Harry’s easy to like.”

He spots the restroom sign a few steps behind Anne, and he excuses himself, kissing her cheek before rushing inside, digging his metal box out of his pocket with trembling fingers. He downs two pills dry before the door opens and Harry walks in, two bottles of beer in his hand and his eyebrows knit together, and Louis freezes.

“So it was true,” Harry says, shaking his head.

“What do you mean?”

“Liam said—he mentioned your habit, you know, he likes to talk about people.” Harry raises an eyebrow at him, almost challenging him, and Louis feels a tightness in his chest as he nods. “He said you’re keen on popping pills. _Too_ keen.”

His tone isn’t judgemental, but Louis gets the idea that he isn’t exactly approving, either.

“It’s not like—“ Louis starts, but he doesn’t know what to say. _It’s not like what?_

Harry raises an eyebrow, challenging him, and Louis hates the sudden urge to explain himself, to make Harry understand. “I get nervous,” he says, at last. “They gave ‘em to me, for my—for my nerves, when I perform. You didn’t see me—I wasn’t doing well, the first week of tour.” He meets Harry’s eyes briefly, then lets his gaze fall to his hands, where he’s still got the two open bottles.

“Don’t think you’re supposed to be taking them with booze, though, are you?” Harry says, but he still hands Louis the beer, and they go back to his dressing room.

Louis gulps down almost half the bottle in one go, the need to calm the turmoil in his chest stronger than the fear of Harry’s judgement. He keeps his eyes down the entire time he’s drinking, and he only meets Harry’s gaze once he sets the bottle down, expecting a fight, only to find him smiling at him.

“For the record, everyone is a mess when they start their first tour,” Harry says resolutely. “Whatever bullshit pills Jerry Lee gave you won’t make you any better on stage, no matter how good they make you feel.”

The words hit him like a punch, and Louis is ready to stand up and leave, because he doesn’t need this, doesn’t want to hear this, least of all from Harry, but then Harry is standing, too, and talking again. “Don’t let this get to your head,” he whispers, and winks at him. “You’re great, Lou. You’ve got the voice, the looks, the style—” Louis tells himself he imagines the way Harry’s eyes roam up and down his face. “You’re too good to let yourself burn out.”

“Easy to say for someone who grew up around all of this—“

“That’s exactly why I’m telling you this, Lou. I’ve seen people get blinded by fame and ruin their relationships, their lives—kids crash and burn because they think they’re different, the exception, that they’re not going to end up like everyone before them—” He stops abruptly, looking away from Louis and blinking rapidly. “I’ve seen amazing people turn to nothing because they took some goddamn pill to solve their problems and didn’t realize what it was doing to them until it came back and hit them in the face.”

The room is eerily quiet when Harry finishes his rant and sits back down, and Louis feels an overwhelming urge to wrap an arm around Harry, to ask him what happened—who he lost— that made him so passionate about this.

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually.

“It’s not—I’m not your parent, I’m not trying to lecture you here, I know—I know you _know_ what can happen to you.” Harry sighs. “I just wish—I could show you how good you are, just as you are. You’re so much better than all those assholes out there, with their blown up egos and their mediocre music. I’d hate to see them ruin you, turn you into some egotistical rock star who can’t see two inches past their nose unless someone’s holding.”

“I’m not—I don’t have—

Harry smiles sadly at him, and shakes his head, heading towards the door. “I wish you could see the way I see you. If you could see just how great you are.”

*

Louis becomes suspicious about a month after Harry joins the tour, starts thinking that people are talking about him. He hears whispers, sometimes, when he’s walking barefoot down the hall and doesn’t make enough noise to alert people to his presence, barging into rooms unexpected.

He sees the techs and the tour managers eyeing him shiftily sometimes, when he and Harry are messing around during someone else’s rehearsal, or when they share a dressing room before a show. He doesn’t really understand it, can’t figure out the reason everyone’s suddenly so concerned with him, but it makes him wary, sets him on edge, and he realizes after a week that he’s burning through his stash a lot faster than usual.

Then, one afternoon, Liam asks, “What do you and Styles do when you hang out?”

“We drink, mostly,” Louis replies easily, followed by a laugh, “and talk shit about music and the lot of you.”

Carl and Niall laugh at that, but Liam doesn’t seem charmed by the joke. “You ever go out and try to pull?”

Ice seeps into his blood, spreading through his limbs, and he scrambles for an answer as he realizes where Liam is going, what he’s implying. He’s been so good at ignoring it all this time, he thought maybe it wasn’t even real, but apparently he thought wrong.

“Everyone knows the ladies go wild for Harry, Liam, he’d be the worst wingman in the South, leaving with all the dames,” he replies, turns it into a joke. “’sides, I got Danielle waiting for me at home, don’t I?”

“Everyone knows fidelity only stretches to the state border, Lou,” Carl jokes. “It ain’t cheating if it’s a different zip code.”

Laughter fills the room again, and Louis lets himself relax for a moment, crisis averted, until he dares a glance towards Liam and finds him looking back at Louis with a calculating look that makes his stomach flip.

Liam waits until the laughter dies down, then clears his throat, all eyes turning to him. “Well, the thing about Styles is—there’s rumours, y’know? People talk. The word gets around,” he begins, smirking, and Louis doesn’t know where this is going, but the smug look on Liam’s face is already pissing him off.

“What are you going on about?” Louis asks, voice coming out higher than he intended. His heart is pounding in his chest, blood rushing in his ears, and he feels as though he might be sick, but Liam won’t look away from him, and Louis has to keep his unaffected façade in case Liam is really doing what Louis thinks he’s going to do.

“They say he’s not what we all think—that it’s all an act.”

“An act?” Carl asks, frowning.

“Quit with the mystery, will ya?” Niall says, knocking his elbow to Liam’s waist, making him yelp.

“Y’all know what I’m talking about.”

Jerry Lee smiles guiltily and shrugs, and Josh, one of the drum techs, looks down.

“I don’t, actually,” Louis says, trying to hide the effect that this whole conversation is having on him.

“People say he’s a fag, you know,” Liam says bluntly, and there’s a collective gasp. “People who’ve worked with him. Say he likes to take it like a gal. Up the ass and whatnot.”

Louis feels like his blood has been replaced with lead, weighing his body down, stopping him from reacting. Eyes around him widen, and someone coughs awkwardly to his right, but he can’t seem to move his head to figure out who.

“Liam Payne, watch your language,” Niall says, snickering, but Louis doesn’t miss the way his eyes are wider than usual and his eyebrow has lifted in surprise.

“Where did you hear this?” Louis asks, throat dry.

“Everyone knows, I think, it’s just that no one talks about it. Wouldn’t wanna get him beat up for it.” Liam shrugs. “You’re chummy with him, aren’t you? Did he ever say anything?”

“Did he ever try something on you?” Carl asks, frowning. “You know how those types are, they’ll try to fuck anything with a dick.”

“What? No, of course not,” Louis says, outraged, “and I doubt any of these rumours are true, anyway. He’s always talking about his model girls and whatnot. And he almost married the Taylor girl, didn’t he?”

“That was ages ago, Lou.” Liam gives him an unimpressed look, then shakes his head. “Anyway, they say it’s his producer, yeah? The one that—you know. Ben Winston. Pretty cool guy, if you ignore his perverted ways.”

“Isn’t he—quite older?” Niall asks, judgment clear in his voice.

“Yeah, a bit, I think. Harry lives with him, I believe, up in San Fran. You know, where all the queers hole up.”

Louis’ brain rushes back to a conversation he and Harry had over cold pizza and Coca-Colas, and he remembers distinctly how Harry said he used to live with his friend Ben, but they’d had a falling out. If he remembers correctly, that’s the main reason Harry ended up joining them on tour. He lets himself consider it for a moment, the possibility of Harry and his man having an ugly break-up and him running away to tour; a heavy weight settles in his stomach, so he reaches for the bottle in his pocket as inconspicuously as he can, pops three at a time and swallows them dry.

*

It feels like something has shifted between them, after Liam’s reveal. Louis still spends most of his free time messing around with Harry, but there’s a new tension whenever they’re alone together, one that Louis doesn’t have a name for.

He finds himself looking at him, when Harry’s looking away, trying to decipher what’s going on in his head, and sometimes Harry looks back, smiling at him, and Louis has no explanation for the way his insides clench at the sight.

He tries not to, but more often than not he finds himself lost in Harry, his mouth dry, excitement rushing through him despite himself as their eyes meet and they both duck their heads, blushing. Occasionally, though, Harry will hold his stare, quirk an eyebrow at him, sending a shiver down his spine, and no matter how much he tries to avoid thinking about it, he can’t help but wonder what it means that Harry can render him speechless with just a look.

They’re all hanging together this afternoon, because they’ve got the day off and Paul was gifted a bottle of bourbon when they stopped in Kentucky, and they’re all drunker than they should be considering they’ll be on the road all day tomorrow.

He’s distracted by a game of cards with Niall, but he looks up after his second win and finds Harry with his eyes on him. He’s drunk enough that he doesn’t look away, finds himself winking at Harry before he can think better of it. Harry’s eyes widen, just for a moment, but then he smiles and ducks his head, going back to the conversation he’s having with one of their techs.

It’s later in the day, once the sun has set and most of them have retreated to their own rooms for the night, that he realizes Harry never came back when he left to get them more beer. Without thinking about it, he leaves the room and rushes down the hall. He doesn’t know where to start looking, but he notices the door to the stage area halfway open, and he can pick up muffled arguing.

He pushes the door all the way open to find Carl scowling at Harry, Harry looking at him like he’s been slapped. Neither of them seem to have noticed Louis’ presence.

“Shut the fuck up about shit you know nothing about,” Harry snaps, and Carl scoffs.

“What are you going to do about it, fag?”

“Hey!” Louis says, stepping in between them. “What’s going on here?”

“Why don’t you ask your boy toy?” Carl spits at him, and before Louis can think better of it, he punches Carl in the face.

Carl ducks fast enough that Louis only gets the side of his face, and pain spreads through his knuckles so fast that he has to cradle his hand. “Shit,” Louis says, watching as Carl scurries away, “Fuck.”

He angrily kicks one of the chairs in front of him, then picks up the next one and throws it angrily on the stage, hitting one of the mic stands with it.

“Well,” Harry says apprehensively, “that was my mic.”

*

Louis can’t stop thinking about it, after that. He spends the night sleepless, tossing and turning until he finally gives up and sneaks out of the room, trying not to wake Niall, and sits in the lobby of their hotel for the remainder of the night, scribbling into a notebook and purposely trying not to think about why he cares so much.

He avoids Harry all morning, until the urge to see him beats out his anxiety, and he finds himself sneaking into Harry’s hotel room shortly after lunch, where he overheard Niall tell Carl that Harry was skipping their poker game to take a nap, because he didn’t sleep well.

 _Well that makes two of us_ , Louis thinks as he sits on the bed, reaching for the book Harry’s got on the bedside table and shifting nervously through the pages.

He’s so lost in his own head that he doesn’t hear the door when it opens, about half an hour later, doesn’t register Harry walking in until he hears his voice. “Lou, is everything alright?”

Louis nods, rubbing his sweaty palms over the duvet, and bursts out, “Liam said something, the other day.”

He tries to go for casual, doesn’t want his tone to give anything away, but he can tell he failed from the way that Harry’s body freezes, how he doesn’t move an inch as the seconds pass and the silence stretches between them.

“What did he say?” Harry asks two beats too late, and his voice is strained, defensive.

Louis regrets ever bringing it up, but he’s itching to know, now, his heart racing in anticipation. “There’s rumours about you, apparently.”

Another moment goes by in which neither of them move, and then Harry finally turns around, his face closed off and his eyes dark, looking so unlike the Harry Louis knows that it makes him shiver.

“I think you should leave now, Louis,” is all Harry says before turning around again, taking quick steps towards the other side of the room.

“No, Harry— wait.” He doesn’t turn around, but Louis doesn’t need him to. “I don’t care. If it’s true or not. I don’t—I just wanted to know.”

“So you can tell your drinking buddies that all the rumours are true?” Harry huffs. “What did Liam say, then?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Too disgusting for you? Too impolite? Weird? Unnatural?”

“That’s not— he was rude about it. I don’t want to repeat the words he used.”

Harry scoffs. “How sensitive of you, Louis,” he says, sneering. “How do you expect to know the true if you can’t even utter the word when you ask me if I’m queer.”

Louis can’t help the way he flinches at the word, sees the hurt in Harry’s eyes even with the entire room between them. “Are you, then?” he asks, anyway, because he’s dug his grave; he might as well lie in it.

“What do you think, Lou?” Harry asks, and the anger has almost faded from his voice, anguish so clear it makes Louis’ chest constrict.

Harry sits down at the edge of the bed and buries his head in his hands, and Louis doesn’t know what compels him to do it, but before he can think about moving, his feet are dragging him across the room, and he’s sitting next to Harry on the bed, their legs brushing as the mattress dips with his weight.

“I’m sorry,” he says. _For bringing it up. For hurting Harry. For never knowing the right thing to say._

“It’s not your fault I’m a fag,” Harry whispers, but it sounds accusatory, somehow.

“Harry—“ Louis starts, but he doesn’t know what to say, so instead, he reaches for Harry’s hand and tangles their fingers together.

“Don’t,” Harry’s says, his tone final, and pulls his hand away. “I don’t want pity. Not from you.”

It takes Louis so long to find the right words that Harry starts getting up from the bed. Louis isn’t looking up, but he can see the hurt in Harry’s face without having to look at him, and just the thought of his words—or lack thereof—hurting Harry is enough to snap him into action.

His hand wraps around Harry’s wrist, his grip firm but gentle, not pulling him back against the mattress but holding him there, keeping him in place. “It’s not pity,” he says when he finds his voice, “I wouldn’t—I could never. Not you.”

“What is it, then?” Harry pushes, but his voice is softer now.

 _I can’t stop thinking about you_.

He can’t say what he’s thinking, the words dead in his throat. He doesn’t even know what he’s feeling, how to make sense of the opposing forces inside him, let alone explain them to Harry. It’s been buzzing around his head for long enough that it’s become a part of him, this foreign want. Urgent desire and crippling fear and the knowledge that when he finally acknowledges it, everything will change.

“Louis,” Harry tries again, and Louis realizes that he hasn’t spoken in a few minutes.

“I don’t know what I—” he whispers, and his eyes flutter open. He’s met with Harry’s honest gaze, much, much closer than he was expecting, and he becomes aware of the strain in his back muscles and the fact that he’s the one leaning in, crowding Harry. Panic surges in his chest and he’s frozen, torn between pulling away or closing the distance between them, when there’s a knock on the door.

The noise startles Louis enough that he’s able to pull back a few inches before the suite door is barging open, Jeff walking in just as Harry’s stood up from the bed. Louis shoots him a grateful smile, but Harry’s stare is blank as he looks from Jeff to Louis and back to his manager, who’s got an impatient look on his face.

“You’re needed on stage, Harry. They’ve replaced your mic but we can’t get the setup right without you there.”

Louis thinks back to the reason Harry’s microphone is broken and is shocked by a wave of warmth when he realizes that Jeff’s scornful tone is directed to Harry, not him. Which means Harry didn’t tell anyone what happened.

“I’ll be right there,” Harry says, nodding. Jeff doesn’t bother with any pleasantries as he exits the room.

Louis waits until the door is shut before getting up and taking two steps towards Harry, who moves just out of reach when Louis extends a hand to him.

“Harry—”

“Not now, Lou,” Harry says, and his tone is resigned.

“See you later, yeah?” Louis says as Harry heads for the door, ignoring the painful pang in his chest as Harry nods, averting his eyes.

Louis stays. He knows Liam and Elvis will most likely be drinking in one of the dressing rooms, the invitation implicit, but he can’t bring himself to go. He isn’t Liam’s biggest fan at the moment, if he’s honest with himself, even though Liam didn’t really do anything. He wasn’t any harsher than anyone else would have been when speaking of Harry’s badly kept secret, but Louis can’t help the bitter taste it’s left in his mouth.

He isn’t wearing a watch, and the clock on the wall in front of him has been switching both needles between 5 and 6 since Louis got to the room, so he has no way of guessing how long it’s been. Long enough that his throat has gone dry and his hands have started shaking. He wonders how much of it can be attributed to his conversation with Harry.

The sound of the door startles him for the second time.

“What are you doing here?” Harry asks, frowning, as he walks in, and Louis flinches at the harshness of his voice.

“You kind of left in the middle of our conversation.”

“I assumed you wouldn’t want to continue once you had time to think about it,” Harry says, shrugging, yet the words hit Louis like a bucket of ice.

“I told you I don’t care about that. It doesn’t—it doesn’t mean anything to me,” he says, and it’s the biggest lie he’s ever told, but Harry doesn’t call him out on it.

Instead, he closes the distance between them and takes a seat next to Louis on the bed, fixing his eyes on the ashen lilac carpet. He looks smaller than Louis has ever seen him, and it breaks his heart, just a little, to know that he caused this, and to not know how to fix it.

He wants to reassure Harry, tell him it changes nothing—even though it does, it changes everything—wants to become the sheltering wall between him and the outside world, never letting anything touch him, ever again. He thinks back to the fight with Carl the night before, how furious he had been, more than Harry had ever seen him, and he can’t help wondering how much of that anger was just trying to mask his fear.

Harry was angry earlier, when Louis confronted him, but maybe he was just scared, all along. Louis is familiar with that sort of fear, the one that makes you lash out in desperation, attempting to cling to the safety of secrecy.

Louis wants to know if it was always scary, having to keep a secret this big, if Harry has led his life keeping one of the most vital parts of who he is tucked away, in a constant state of vigilance, the way that Louis has with his past. If it was harder for him; if it was easier.

“Did you always know?” he asks before he can stop himself.

“I guess, in a way. It’s hard to know in retrospect if I did or if I’m just trying to make sense of everything, now that I know. Maybe it wasn’t all leading up to this. Maybe it was.”

Harry stands up, rubs his hands nervously against his stomach, leaving his shirt rumpled. He runs his fingers through his hair, making his curls stick out at odd angles, and then takes a seat next to Louis again.

“I spent a few years hating this part of me, you know?” he says, his voice barely a whisper. “I think we all do, at first. I went to church. I heard the stories, too. And so I grew up terrified that I was never going to be happy. That I wasn’t meant to be.”

It resonates so much with Louis that he has to clench his fists, let his nails dig into the flesh of his palm to stop his mind from betraying him and wandering away.

“Are you, now?” he asks, because he desperately needs to know.

“Am I happy? Am I allowed to be?” Harry asks, but it doesn’t sound like a question. “I’m supposed to hate myself for this, aren’t I? That’s what they say. That what I am, shouldn’t be.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“No,” Harry says, and huffs out a laugh. “Surprisingly, against all odds, I’m quite at peace with who I am.”

Louis can’t school his expression into something that hides his surprise fast enough, and Harry smiles knowingly at him, shaking his head.  “It sounds impossible to you, doesn’t it? Someone being happy being a homosexual.”

“That’s not—“

“It’s alright, Louis, I get it. I grew up hearing the same spiel as you.” Harry shudders, then smiles. “It loses significance when you find other things that make you feel full, that give your life meaning. It’s hard to believe you’re going to hell when kissing another man feels like heaven itself, you know?”

“I wouldn’t,” Louis says, and he feels hot all over under Harry’s gaze.

“Falling for a man changed my views quite a bit.”

Louis thinks he knows what that’s like, but the words are stuck to his throat like tacks,  sharp and painful and immovable, so he nods.

“Do you ever—do you ever wish you weren’t?” _Gay_ , he doesn’t say, but he doesn’t have to.

If Harry thinks anything of Louis’s reluctance to use the word, he doesn’t show it. “Not really; not anymore. But—” Harry sighs, then shakes his head. “I always wanted kids, you know. That is something that I think I’ll always hate about being like this. The one thing.”

The words touch something inside Louis, and he’s leaning over, taking Harry’s hand in his. The single touch sends a shiver down his spine, and he has to take a deep breath to calm his vocal chords before he can speak. “I was gonna have a kid, did you know? Danielle got pregnant, about a year back. We couldn’t afford it, but she got pregnant. Lost it. I didn’t want a baby and yet now that it’s gone, I wonder if that was my only chance.”

He huffs out a laugh, but it’s muffled by a pair of lips, because Harry chooses that moment to kiss him square on the mouth. Louis freezes, ever so slightly, and Harry pulls away like he’s been burnt.

“I’m sorry. I got—Fuck. Shit. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Louis says, but it’s not. His body feels electrified, his fingertips buzzing in anticipation, and his breath comes out ragged when he finally manages to exhale. Harry just stares at him like he’s seen a ghost.

His lips are that dark raspberry red that makes Louis’ head spin sometimes; he’s biting on them hard enough to draw blood, and Louis feels a fleeting surge of rage at that, overwhelming desire filling him to the brim, and he wants to slap Harry out of it, knock his teeth out, because if anyone is going to bite his lips, it should be Louis.

It all makes sense, right then; something inside of Louis clicks, like every lightbulb in town’s lit up at the same time to show him the right path. It feels like a long time coming, and even as shock has frozen him in place, he doesn’t find himself surprised by the realization that he wants to kiss Harry more than he’s ever wanted to do anything else.

He leans forward, stopping short of Harry’s lips, and he looks up, meeting Harry’s gaze. Everything slows down as their eyes lock, and Louis feels like he’s lost control of his own body. One of his hands moves up to brush one of Harry’s curls off his forehead, his fingertips barely grazing the skin there, and Harry lets out the faintest sigh, his lips parting ever so slightly. Louis can’t help looking down, and as he finds Harry’s red lips bitten raw, he knows it’s a lost battle.

Maybe it wasn’t all leading up to this, but Louis thinks it was.

They meet in the middle, and everything around them fades as Harry’s soft, velvety lips close over his. His hand flies to the back of Harry’s neck, clutching him fiercely, pulling him in, and his eyes flutter closed. He feels hands cupping his face, thumbs caressing his jaw, and he can’t stop his other hand from moving on top of Harry’s, linking their fingers.

Their second kiss turns into a third, and a fourth, and then it’s _kissing_ , and Louis loses count as the world ceases to exist and everything narrows down to the ferocity of Harry’s lips on him.

It’s dizzying, too much too soon, and Louis goes lightheaded after a moment, feels a surge of anger because Harry’s got no business kissing him so good, flipping his life around. Desire is hot in his veins, thrumming inside him, and Louis doesn’t know how he ever thought he could deny himself this. How he thought he could live without it.

He doesn’t remember ever being this turned on, his hands shaking and his toes curling even though both of Harry’s hands are still resting over his cheeks, and he can’t help the laugh that erupts from his chest, how he shivers against Harry’s lips as he pulls away. _God_.

“God,” Harry huffs, smiling almost manically. “You are— God.”

 _Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain_ , a deep voice says in his head, but he shakes it away. “Yeah,” he breaths instead, a shiver moving through him. “ _God_.”

Louis finds himself laughing against Harry’s lips, pulling him into another kiss, and they fall back against the mattress, giggling into each other’s mouths and unable to stop kissing. Harry lets go of Louis’s face and slide up the bed, taking a hold of Louis’ vest and tugging so that Louis falls on top of him.

Their chests are touching and their faces are so close, one of Louis’ knees snuck right between Harry’s legs, their hips only inches apart. Harry’s eyes are closed as he pulls Louis down to crush their lips together again, and Louis buries his hands in Harry’s hair and melts into the kiss, letting his body come lower until every inch of him is flush against Harry.

Louis stills and waits for the jolt of panic to hit him, for the need to bolt to fill him up. His eyes lock with Harry’s as they break apart from the kiss, and Louis knows that he’s thinking the same thing, that he’s waiting for everything to come crashing down around them.

There’s nothing but the rush of blood in Louis’ ears as they stare at each other, expectant, time stretching on as neither of them make a move. Harry’s eyes grow more and more uncertain, and Louis can feel his heart beating relentlessly against his ribcage, even in their stillness.

He knows it’s up to him, where he decides to take this, whether tonight in Harry’s room is the beginning or the end of whatever the fuck is going on between them, and Louis almost wants to yell at Harry for putting it all on him, for making him decide.

Except— Louis realizes, as the initial apprehension starts to dissipate, he can’t see himself stopping, moving away, leaving. He can’t figure out any possible outcome that isn’t his lips on every inch of Harry, his hands exploring and learning and taking Harry apart.  

He feels himself trembling against Harry’s body as the realization sinks in that this is where he wants to be, where he’s meant to be. The intensity of it all hits him all at once, knocks the breath out of him, and his eyes close and he lets his forehead rest against Harry’s as he tries to grasp what happening between them. When he opens them again, Harry is staring at him like Louis is the most important thing in the universe, looking as bare as Louis feels.

Finally— _finally_ — when everything has blurred around them and all that’s left is the two of them, Louis smiles, and nods, and his lips find Harry’s once again. Then the universe combusts inside of Louis. It’s as overwhelming as it was the first time around and then some, electricity buzzing through him as his body moves against Harry’s like he’s starving for his touch.

He doesn’t hesitate this time when he feels Harry’s hard on against his own, but instead pushes down, pressing against it, relishing in the groan that escapes Harry’s lips. He does it again, and finds himself groaning this time as a wave of pleasure flows through him.

“Lou, ”Harry whispers, “is this— can I?”

Louis nods eagerly before even processing what Harry is talking about, and then he feels him shift underneath him and becomes aware of the hands at his belt, trying to undo it, palms brushing against Louis’ erection and making him shiver.

He’s shaking with anticipation, waiting for Harry’s touch, and he lets his eyes flutter closed as he hears the shuffling of sheets around him, but instead of feeling a hand curling around him, both of Harry’s arms wrap around his legs and pull him down and then Louis’ gasping as Harry takes him into his mouth with no preamble.

“Fuck—Shit, Harry, _God.”_

Another wave of pleasure crashes through him as Harry hums, then moans around him, and Louis forces himself to open his eyes. The view—Harry lying underneath him, pink mouth wrapped tightly around him, cheeks flushed and eyes peacefully shut—shakes the ground beneath him. His hips thrust forward before he can stop them, and Harry laughs, cock still in his mouth, and pulls away to murmur, “Easy, there.”

His arms tighten around Louis’ legs, as if to control the pace, but then his mouth is back on Louis and he’s taking him impossibly deeper, to the resistance of his throat and then more, swallowing around him. Every single one of Louis’ muscles tenses in anticipation, pleasure knotting and curling in his stomach,  

“If I make you come right now,” Harry asks, voice hoarse and lips red, “will you be able to come again? I want—I want us to do it together.”

“Shit—yes. God, yes.” He nods, and Harry takes him in his hand, tugs him twice and opens his mouth to close around him, but he doesn’t get to as Louis’ eyes shut and he comes all over Harry’s face.

Harry, the fucking champ, doesn’t move away, and when Louis opens his eyes again he finds Harry smiling up at him, streaks of white all over his lips and down his chin.

Louis moves back in alarm as Harry pushes himself up on his elbows. “I’m sorry, H, I should have—“

He’s rendered speechless as Harry’s tongue darts out of his mouth and licks his lips clean, then Harry wipes his face with the back of his hand and smiles sheepishly at Louis.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a really long time,” Harry admits, his tone smug.

“How long?” Louis asks before he can stop himself, feeling warm all over.

“Too long.” Harry shrugs, scratching absentmindedly at his hair.

Louis whines in protest, closing the distance between their lips once again hoping it’ll encourage Harry to answer, but Harry simply smiles against his lips and pulls away, smirking.

“Harold,” he whines, dragging out the vowels. “I want to know. How long?”

“I don’t know, is forever long enough?” Harry asks, his ears turning red. “Since I saw you backstage at the Ryman. Probably before that.”

“That was the first time you ever saw me!”

“Yeah,” Harry says, almost longingly. “I’d heard you before, though.”

He’s biting his lower lip, looking up at Louis expectantly, and it tugs at Louis’ heart, how easily Harry goes from the confident man that steps on stage like he owns the planet to looking so small and unsure of himself.

“I used to listen to your songs, you know? Back in Germany, when we first got there, there was a broken radio at our base that got discarded, so Stan and I picked it up. It didn’t always get a signal, and the sound was pretty broken up, but there was this station that used to play American music late at night, and even when it was mostly white noise, I could always pick out your voice—“

Louis is knocked on his back as Harry all but jumps him, lips moving against him as hands scramble to unbutton Louis’ shirt.

“Lou—you can’t—“ Harry says, panting as his hands slide over Louis’ stomach, “you can’t say things like that.”

His shirt is discarded somewhere behind them, and then Harry is tugging to get his pants all the way off, and there’s a fleeting moment of embarrassment when he realizes he’s naked in front of a fully dressed Harry, but Harry kicks his own slacks and underwear off and Louis’ mouth goes dry.

The air in the room changes, and Louis is unable to take his eyes off of Harry’s dick, hard and pink and leaning slightly to the left, the tip shiny with pre-cum, making Louis want to press his lips there. He reaches, slowly, for Harry’s shirt, then undoes it one button at a time, his eyes still fixed on Harry’s groin. Harry’s hand cups his cheek and gently tilts his face so that they’re looking at each other again.

The kiss this time is slower, gentler, but not any less intense, and Louis’ heart stutters in his chest as Harry wraps his arms around his waist and pulls him closer so that their chests are bumping together, their hips aligned and their erections rubbing together.

It should feel weird, Louis thinks, to have another man’s genitals pressed against yours, but it’s good, so good Louis is delirious with it. He drags his teeth along Harry’s neck, leaves faint bite marks up his jaw, then finds his mouth again, the press of Harry’s lips so good he sighs against them.

Harry kisses him and kisses him, slow like honey, lips dragging together in a lazy rhythm, matching the pace to his thrusts. Louis slides a hand to Harry’s lower back, urging him closer, then moves it farther down, squeezing Harry’s ass before sliding between his cheeks.

Harry keens, and his mouth slackens, and then their kisses become desperate, their hips matching frantic movements, snapping erratically, trying to get as much contact as they can. Louis snakes his other hand between their bodies, looking to give himself some release, but he’s unable to wrap it around himself without enveloping Harry, too. Groaning, Harry brings one of his own hands and curls it around both of their erections, fingers overlapping with Louis’, and together they tug one, two, three times before they both come in synchrony.

It’s a long moment before Louis comes down from it, his eyes still blurry when he manages to open them, a phantom ache in his legs from tensing right before his release.  Harry is slumped on top of him, head resting on his chest, and Louis notices when he reaches for Harry’s hand that he’s shaking slightly. Louis links their fingers together and lifts their hands to his lips, kissing gently, over and over again, until the shaking subsides and Harry begins to stir.

“Hi,” Harry says, and looks up at him, eyes still hazy, faint tears streaks staining his cheeks.

Louis’ heart feels like it’s grown three sizes, suddenly too big to be contained in his chest, and he finds it hard to breathe properly at the sight of Harry like this. There are a thousand things he wants to say to him, a million promises he wants to make, but he can’t make them push past the lump in his throat without spilling his insides all over the bed.

He wraps his arms around Harry’s torso instead, pulling him closer, and presses a kiss to his forehead. Harry shuffles on his chest until he gets comfortable, eyes flutter close, sighing against Louis’ chest. They’re not due on stage for hours, so Louis allows himself to indulge in this, closing his eyes and letting the warmth of Harry’s body drift him to sleep.

Waking up next to Harry feels like stepping from one dream onto the next. Louis opens his eyes to find him already awake, his hair a mess of curls and lip tugged between his teeth as if to stop himself from smiling. He’s drawing patterns on Louis’ chest, the touch light as a feather, and his eyes are still crinkled with sleep; Louis’ heart leaps to his throat, and he thinks he doesn’t want to wake up to any other face, ever again.

“Morning,” he murmurs, and Harry smiles nervously at him.

“Hi.”

Louis closes the distance between them and pulls Harry into a kiss. It’s soft and easy, a bare press of lips against his, yet Louis feels like he’s drowning, his chest too tight, too small to contain all that Harry Styles is making him feel.

“Is it always like this?” he asks before he can stop himself, feeling like school girl as the words pass his lips. “With a man, is it always this intense?”

Harry’s eyes widen, and Louis is worried for a brief moment that he’s going to ask what he means, but Harry’s face softens and his hand slides from where it’s cradling Louis’ face down to his neck, thumb pressed softly against his pulse point. He takes Louis’ other hand and brings it to his chest, resting it palm down over his heart.

The fluttering of Harry’s heart, beating almost out of control, startles Louis, and he closes his eyes, tries to count the beats, absentmindedly wondering if they match his own.

“It isn’t,” Harry says, and kisses him. “It’s never been like this for me.”

*


	5. 1958

 

There is something to be said, Louis thinks, about how fast someone can become the centre of your universe, like they were supposed to be there all along.

He finds himself unable to care about anything else, living for the stolen moments he and Harry get between rehearsals and shows.

They meet in Harry’s dressing room before a show—Louis’ own always too crowded, as Niall has taken to inviting everyone for a drink with him— reveling in every second of alone time they get. There’s hurried kisses behind the stage when there’s no one around, and sneaking into each other’s rooms late at night after everyone is either passed out or too drunk to notice.

Louis doesn’t remember a time where he felt so alive.

He counts the minutes until the time he gets to see Harry, and then every moment he’s with him, wishing he didn’t have to leave again.

“I can’t get enough of you,” Harry says one afternoon, after sucking Louis off in the bathroom, followed by a breathless moan as he works himself to the edge while Louis attempts to catch his breath.

“How are you so good at this?” Louis asks once his voice comes back, tangling his hand in Harry’s curls and pulling him in for a kiss.

“Practice,” Harry says with a smirk when they break apart, and he opens his mouth to add something else but is cut off by a groan as Louis bites down on his collarbone.

Harry spills all over Louis’ stomach and collapses against him, mouthing at his neck in between pants, and Louis keeps one hand on Harry’s hair but lets the other one wonder down to his own stomach, where Harry’s sticky cum is starting to cool. Before he can really stop to think about it, he scoops some up with two fingers and brings it to his mouth. He feels Harry’s breath hitching as he darts his tongue out and licks his fingers clean, trying not to grimace at the taste. It’s not _terrible_ , just bitter, and the texture of it is weird but Louis thinks he can handle it if he focuses on the fact that it’s _Harry’s_.

“It’s better when it’s still warm,” Harry says, as if reading his mind, and then leans in to kiss him again. “God, you’re going to kill me.”

“It’s not _bad_.” Louis shrugs, and Harry laughs, their chests vibrating together with it.

They kiss again, and again, until their lips are sore and they’re both starting to get hard again from rubbing against each other. Louis considers taking Harry in his hand, getting him fully hard, and then maybe dropping on his knees and trying to see what it is about giving blowjobs that Harry enjoys so much.

He’s so caught up in his considerations that he doesn’t notice he’s stopped kissing back until Harry pulls away from him with a frown. “Everything alright?”

Louis nods, pressing his lips against Harry’s before burying his face in his neck. “I was just thinking—”

“Yeah?”

“Why do you like blowing me so much?”

Harry’s laugh fills the bathroom and Louis bites his neck in retaliation. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry says, voice filled with mirth, “I’m not, I promise—I just. I don’t know, I just _do_.”

“But _why_?”

Louis can feel the tremors of Harry’s silent laugh as he scrambles for an answer, and he huffs in annoyance, glaring even though Harry can’t see him.

“It feels good, yeah? When you’re on the receiving end?”

Louis nods, rolling his eyes. Well, _of course_.

“That’s it, really. I just want to make you feel that way,” Harry says, and his hand reaches for Louis’ neck, pulling him back so that they’re face to face again. “I like knowing that I can make you feel that good. That I’m the reason for your moans and groans and cries—“

“I don’t _cry,_ Harold _._ ”

Harry’s eyes soften and he leans in to press a kiss to the corner of Louis’ mouth. “I just want to make you feel good, Louis. That’s why I like blowing you. Because you like it.”

“Do you—do you want me to do it to you?”

“I want whatever you want, Lou. I just like being with you, like this.” He rolls his hips and Louis’ breath hitches as they rub against each other. “What we do doesn’t matter to me.”

The honesty in his voice makes Louis lightheaded; the realization that he wants this, wants it so much, is so intense that he has to lean against Harry for support. “Okay,” he says, after a moment, his voice barely more than a whisper, “I think—I think I want to.”

Harry grins at him, all teeth, and Louis has to pull him into another kiss just to make him stop.

*

Louis first attempt at a blowjob, days later, goes badly.

He isn’t necessarily scared. He’s excited, mainly, and a little nervous, but for the most part he’s just worried about doing a good job. Harry’s proven to have stellar oral skills, and as much as Louis isn’t a perfectionist, he’s competitive, and he doesn’t want to suck at it.

“Well, you _do_ want to suck, actually,” Harry tells him when he voices his concern, and Louis glares at him. “I don’t care if it isn’t perfect, Lou, I care that it’s you.” Louis assumes he must look unimpressed by Harry’s words, if Harry’s laugh is anything to go by. “We don’t have to do this now, either. I told you, I’m perfectly happy keeping things the way they are, too.”

“I want to do this,” Louis says, stubbornly, and finally closes his mouth around Harry’s cock, if only to prove a point. It’s too much, too fast, and he chokes on it, pulling back with tears in his eyes and coughing while Harry laughs unabashedly.

“Hey,” he complains, glaring at Harry, “you don’t get to make fun of me. I’m doing this for you.”

“Not doing much for me, here, if I’m honest,” Harry jokes, and Louis pinches his thigh.

Harry yelps, then snickers, and Louis closes his eyes to stop himself from glaring again. “I can stop if you’d rather I didn’t do anything—“

A hand graces Louis’ shoulder, and when he looks up he finds Harry’s face has gone serious, a small frown below his nose. “You know you don’t have to do this, right? I’m perfectly fine taking this slow.”

Louis huffs and bites the inside of Harry’s thigh. “Will you shut up about that already? I told you I want to do this, Harold, now let me get to work.”

He changes his mind about ten minutes later, when his jaw’s gone sore and his eyes are tearing up and Harry has gone soft in his mouth twice. Harry smiles apologetically at him before pulling him off completely and hoisting Louis up into a kiss.

“Not a single word, Harold,” he says bitterly against Harry’s lips, and Harry’s laugh in response sets off canons in Louis’ stomach.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Harry says solemnly, and then, “Can I come on your ass?”

Louis mouth goes dry, but he nods, palms sweating as Harry turns him around and pulls his pants down to his knees, placing a bite on Louis’ left cheek that sends a shiver all the way to his toes.

“God, your ass,” Harry says, and Louis can’t see his face, but his voice is reverent, and once again it renders him speechless that someone like Harry could ever want _him_. It’s only a moment before he feels sticky warmth on the small of his back, rolling between his cheeks, and it isn’t until Harry wraps a hand around him and tugs that he realizes how painfully hard he is. Harry presses bites and kisses to his neck and shoulders as he works Louis leisurely, and Louis finds himself falling apart under his touch, shaking as he spills against the mattress.

“I’m gonna blow you next time,” he says tiredly after he’s come down from his orgasm, “and it will blow your mind.”

Harry smiles and presses a kiss to his jaw, and Louis has almost drifted off when Harry’s voice wakes him again. “You already do, love.”

*

Louis realizes, after a few weeks of spending his every free second holed up with Harry in his hotel room, that he hasn’t spoken to Niall off the stage in _days_ , nor has he hung out with any of the guys outside their post-show drinks since the whole thing with Harry started; a wave of panic at what it might mean accompanies the insight.

He doesn’t mean to alienate Harry, but he notices Liam’s puzzled looks whenever he goes straight to the empty seat next to Harry on the bus, or when he decides to stay back at the hotel as the rest of them go out, so…he starts to stay away, when they’re in public.

Harry doesn’t comment on it when Louis stops sitting by his side when they’re all out for drinks before the show, or when he starts avoiding Harry’s eyes when they’re backstage before a performance. He doesn’t say a word when Louis starts ignoring his presence altogether when anyone else is present, and he even stays quiet when, on the day they travel from Tallahassee to Jacksonville, Louis steps on the bus and ignores the only empty seat next to Harry in favour of squishing next to Liam and Elvis.

They’ve got about six hours on the road, anyway, and it’s not like Louis won’t be sneaking into Harry’s room after the show, so he doesn’t worry.

It’s Niall who takes his spot at Harry’s side instead, and Louis spends most of the trip trying to ignore whatever argument Liam and Elvis are having about girls on the West Coast—“They’re wild, Louis, _wild_.”—and trying to pick up as much as he can of Niall and Harry’s conversation instead.

They’re all exhausted by the time they get to the hotel—a downgrade from the ones they’ve been staying in before—and most of them ignore Elvis’ invitation to go to the pub down the street. Louis finally looks around to find Harry and hold one of their silent conversations to figure out whose room they’re holing up for the night in, but Harry’s already disappeared.

Heart stuck in his throat, Louis doesn’t bother dropping off his bag at his room before going to find Harry. “Can we talk?” he asks as soon as the door opens, trying to ignore the pang in his chest as he takes in Harry’s tight-knit expression and weary smile. He’s shrugged off the jacket he had on the bus, and the t-shirt he’s wearing is threadbare, white, and fits a little too snugly. It takes a couple of seconds for Louis to realize that it’s his own, and his ribs tighten around his lungs. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize—“

“You’re upset.”

“Well,” Harry starts, waving his hands in the air like he’s scrambling for an answer, “yeah, Lou, I’m upset.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” Harry says, his tone harsher than Louis expected, and then shakes his head before lowering his shoulders and adding, a little softer, “Do you even know what you’re apologizing for?”

“You’re upset,” Louis repeats, and he feels like an idiot for not being able to string a sentence together when Harry’s clearly hurt in front of him, “because I ignored you today—“

“I’m not—it’s not about today, Lou. It’s about _you_ —playing at this double life.” Harry looks surprised by the words coming out of his mouth, but he doesn’t back down.

“I can’t just tell everyone what’s going on, Harry, you know I can’t. This—us. It’s still so new to me, I’m barely getting used to it myself, and it’s just—”

“I get it, Lou, I do,” Harry says with a sigh, “I just wish it wasn’t all or nothing with you.”

“I’m sorry—I didn’t. I didn’t mean to ignore you.”

Harry gives him an unimpressed look, shaking his head. “Yes, you did, Louis. Don’t act like this is some misunderstanding. I get it. You’re scared. You don’t want people to know—I don’t _blame_ you for wanting to hide.”

“I’m sorry,” Louis mumbles again, defeated.

Harry doesn’t say that it’s okay, but he closes the distance between them and wraps his arms around Louis, pulling him to his chest. “Acting like I don’t exist isn’t very organic either, you know. People are going to pick up on that too, eventually.”

Louis nods against his shirt, presses a kiss to the centre of Harry’s chest and sighs. “I know, I just—I don’t know how to— how not to be like this, with you.”

Harry quirks an eyebrow at him. “You think it’s any easier for me? Half the time I see you walking around the venue I want to drop to my knees in front of you.” Louis feels his jaw go slack. “It’s always a struggle—I’m always holding back, keeping things in. Of course I’d rather be kissing you than pretending I don’t know there’s bite marks underneath the collar of your shirt that I left the night before.”

Before he’s made a decision, Louis surges forward, crushing his lips against Harry’s, arms wrapping around him tightly. He kisses with determination, trying to fix everything from the past two weeks with his mouth. Harry melts against him, pushing his groin against Louis’, and Louis notices he’s starting to harden against him. Making a split decision, Louis breaks the kiss and drops to his knees, shoving Harry’s dress pants down and burying his head in the junction of his thigh, breathing him in.

Harry gasps and stills against him as Louis starts licking over the fabric of his underwear, rolling his tongue over the damp spot where his tip is already leaking.

“Let me show you,” he says, and his voice comes out thicker than he expected, “how much I want you.”

He hooks his thumbs in the waistband of Harry’s underwear and pulls it down, relishing the way his cock bobs in front of him. Louis licks his lips and dives straight in, closing his mouth around the tip and sucking. Harry’s hands immediately bury themselves in his hair, fingers massaging lightly at his scalp—not pushing, but keeping him in place.

“Louis, you are—“

Louis pulls off to smile wickedly at Harry, then places a hand at his base and takes as much of him as he can into his mouth, willing himself to relax when he feels it hit the back of his throat. The urge to gag is there, but Louis pushes it down, closing his eyes and focusing on the heavy feel of Harry in his mouth, the bitter taste of his arousal making him strain against his own pants.

It takes longer than Louis wishes it did— if only because of the strain in his jaw and the ache from kneeling on the hardwood floor—but he pulls off just as Harry comes with a loud groan, catching most of it with his tongue, and he absently thinks that he would have stayed on his knees forever, if only to get that sound of Harry one more time.

“You are amazing,” Harry says, pulling him back up and into a kiss,.“The best—ever—most beautiful. Wonderful. God, Louis—do you have any idea—“

He _does_ , because Harry’s words sound suspiciously like his internal monologue about Harry, but instead of replying, he kisses Harry back with equal enthusiasm, gripping at his hips to push their groins together one more time. He sighs against Harry’s lips when one of his hands closes around him, jerking him roughly, and he lets his head drop to Harry’s shoulder, gets lost in his touch. If the words that come out of his mouth echo Harry’s sentiment, well, Harry said them first.

*

Two nights later, Louis has the first nightmare he’s had in months. It’s not a terrible one, as far as his go, but he wakes up with the blast of an explosion, covered in sweat and shivering, and he can’t help flinching when a hand sets on his shoulder.

Harry jerks back as if burnt, whispering an apology like he’s scared of his voice setting Louis off. He’s wearing one of Louis’ tees, white and ratty and a little too small on him; even in his panicked state, Louis stops for a second to admire how beautiful he is.

“Bad dream,” he says, shaking his head to try to ground himself. “Sorry for waking you.”

“Don’t care about that,” Harry mumbles, and scoots closer. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Louis says, but his voice wavers and betrays him, and he looks down as he curls into himself in embarrassment.

“Does this happen a lot?”

“Not—not as often, anymore. It was worse when I first moved to America, after he—and then after Germany, I used to dream about Stan all the time.”

“Who’s Stan?”

“Stan was my best friend from high school—we met soon after I moved in with Eddie. He got deployed at the same time as me. He didn’t—he got pneumonia and didn’t—he didn’t make it.”

Harry doesn’t say anything, but his arms tighten around Louis and he presses a kiss to his temple. “How was it?” Harry asks, idly running a finger along his Adam’s apple. “Deployment, I mean.”

“Boring, at first. There was a lot of sitting around, waiting for something. It was always cold, and often wet, and even though we were out of the conflict zone it was still—there was always that feeling that a bomb could be dropped on you at any given time.”

“Were you scared?”

Louis looks down to Harry’s finger, which has made its way to his navel, drawing around it with dragging fingernails. “Wouldn’t you have been?”

“Yes.”

Lips press firmly against his collarbone, and Louis looks at Harry to find that his eyes are closed, smile ghosting on his mouth as he sheds kisses on Louis’ shoulder.

“We got ambushed, once,” Louis says, and sighs, hoping to keep the images at bay. “It was a group of extremists—not even official forces, you know? But they killed six in our squad. Injured a whole lot more.”

“Is that how you got this?” Harry asks, and slides his hand down to the puckered skin on his left calf, making Louis shiver when he pricks the insensate skin around it.

He shakes his head and lets out a laugh. “That was Calvin, actually,” he says, sitting up and twisting his leg so he can look at the healed wound. “First time he ever tried to clean his pistol. Idiot didn’t even check the safety.”

Harry hums, and runs his fingers over it again, brushing against Louis’ hand. “Did you ever?” he asks, and makes sure Louis meets his eyes this time. “Shoot someone, I mean.”

Louis’ own lyrics play back at him, an afternoon in Reno that never happened, and he shakes his head. “We were in combat twice, in those three years, and both times it was unplanned. I wasn’t—I spent the day sitting around, trying to intercept Russian transmissions so that someone could decode them, and most of the time they were decoys. Not a lot of time to kill anyone. But still—” He takes a deep breath. “I didn’t think—the war was supposed to be over, you know? We were there to intercept messages, not—not fight. I wasn’t expecting to lose so much because of it.”

Harry’s fingers find Louis hand and wrap around his wrist, thumb pressed against his pulse point.

“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t gone, you know—I never would have signed up on my own, I don’t—it’s not even _my_ country, really. But there was nothing else to do, and Eddie couldn’t keep me anymore, not unless I started contributing, and what—what else could I have possibly done?”

Next to him, Harry looks like he wants to say something, mouth set in a thin line and eyebrows hunched together, but he stays quiet, and Louis continues. “We did some good things, you know? I know that. But was it—was it worth the pain? The losses? I’ll never be rid of some of the things I saw, some of the things I let happen.”

Harry hums, and it sounds like disagreement, but neither of them acknowledge it. He brings Louis’ hand to his face and presses his lips to the spot on his wrist he was caressing moments before.

“I often wonder if I’d be here, if I hadn’t spent that time in Germany. I’d probably would have married Eleanor straight out of high school, and I’d be stuck in a loveless marriage, working a factory job and resenting my life.”

“Maybe you would have gotten signed earlier,” Harry says quietly, “joined me on my first tour, and then this would have happened a lot sooner.”

“Unlikely.”

“It’s not—I’m not happy you went through all that, I hate that you had to experience so much pain but…I’m glad that it led us to where we are today.” Harry’s fingers skitter down Louis’ neck, feather light, making him shiver. “I don’t think there’s a point in wondering what would have been, what could have happened, because it didn’t. This happened and this is the present that we get.” Harry’s eyes find his, wide and unbearably open, “But I like to think that even if you hadn’t gone to Germany, if you hadn’t met Niall and played at the Rhyman, we still would have found each other, somehow.”

 _It was always leading up to this_ , Louis thinks, and kisses him.

*

It’s their first day off after four back-to-back shows, and Louis is sprawled on Harry’s bed, writing in his notebook; Harry sits by the window with his guitar, playing a quiet beat and humming, lending rhythm to the song slowly taking shape under Louis’ hand.

He tries singing a few lines, but it sounds wrong, like it’s missing something, and frustration bubbles in his chest. Louis huffs and throws the notebook on the floor, sitting up and pouting at Harry.

“What’s it?” Harry asks, and Louis rolls his eyes, gesturing to the notebook on the floor. “Let me see.”

Louis hands him the notebook, and in turn Harry gives him the guitar. He hums the melody as Harry’s eyes skim down the page. He’s waiting for a suggestion or idea, but he’s surprised when Harry starts singing instead, his voice hushed and tentative, like he’s scared of Louis’ reaction.

Harry stops singing the second Louis stops humming, glancing up nervously, but Louis smiles as reassuringly as he can and urges him to keep going, picking up the guitar and attempting to play the same chords Harry was yesterday.

They spend most of the afternoon like that: singing lyrics back at each other in between kisses; jotting down ideas; and by the time the sun sets they’ve got a proper song in front of them. Louis doesn’t say it, but he thinks it’s his favourite he’s ever written.

“We should record this sometime,” he says instead. “When we’re back from the East Coast, maybe?” Harry hums, noncommittal. “We have a few days off before we head to San Francisco, don’t we? We could ask—Niall has a friend in L.A., maybe he could—“

“Louis,” Harry interrupts him, his tone more serious than Louis was expecting, “you know we can’t do that.”

“What?”

“It’s a love song, Louis,” Harry says, his voice straining on the word _love._ “We wrote a love song together, after I spent the morning with your dick in my mouth.”

Louis frowns, unsure of where this is going, and he opens his mouth to ask what Harry means just as he starts talking again.

“We’re men, Louis. Two men. Who wrote a love song. Do you really think we can just go into the studio and record it like it’s nothing? You think they’d let us?”

“Shit,” Louis says, deflating, ike he’s just received a punch to the solar plexus. “I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking.”

“You don’t—you don’t realize, do you?”

Louis wishes he had his pills with him: maybe he could pop one dry while Harry looks away, but Jerry’s guy hasn’t stopped by yet and he took his last one before the show the night before, so he has to swallow down the wave of nausea and pretend the way Harry’s looking at him doesn’t feel like someone’s clawing at his chest. He shakes his head, mutters an apology, and Harry tells him that it’s fine but there’s something in the way he says it that makes Louis wonder if there’s more to it than he’s letting on.

He sings the lyrics in his head that night as he falls asleep on Harry’s chest, picturing a life in which he can stand on stage and proclaim his love for Harry to the entire world.

*

It happens by chance (Louis stopped believing in luck somewhere between watching his brother bleed to death and being shipped to a different continent by an angry father, but spending so much time with Harry is starting to change his views about it) that they get locked down in a hotel together.

They wake up late, still somewhat unused to the Eastern time, bleary-eyed and naked, wrapped around each other from the previous night, and it takes both of them a moment to register the relentless knocking on the door.

Panic surges in Louis’ chest and he dashes out of the bed, ignoring the fleeting disappointment on Harry’s face as he watches Louis hide behind the bathroom door. Harry throws on one of the robes the hotel provided them and opens the door, stepping just outside of Louis’ view.

He hears a voice, male, but it’s hushed enough that Louis can’t tell if it’s someone from their crew or not, and he can’t risk peeking out from his hiding spot to confirm, so instead he waits, heart hammering against his ribcage, until the sound of the door closing tells him it’s safe to come out.

“It seems,” Harry says as soon as the door is shut behind him, “that we have lost our flight.”

“What?”

“There’s a storm coming. Airports are shutting down, so they got everyone out onto earlier flights. Elvis and Carl drove down to the city, because they’ve got a gig there tonight, and we’re all meant to meet back in Atlantic City when the storm passes. It’s supposed to be two days.”

“Do they know—“

“They think you were out partying and—” Harry looks away. “Ben lives in Massachusetts. They just assumed.“

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you going to go see him, then?” Louis asks, his voice too raw for him to try to conceal his apprehension.

“What? Of course not.”

“Oh,” Louis says, and relief washes over him. “Oh, good.”

“You thought—“

“I didn’t know,” Louis says defensively, “what to think. You never— you’ve never told me about him. I don’t know what it’s like between you.”

“There’s nothing between us,” Harry says firmly. “That’s—it’s in the past. I’m not—I wouldn’t do that to you.”

A vile taste swims up his throat as Louis thinks of Danielle, and he rubs a shaky hand over his face in frustration. “Fuck.”

“Louis—Lou, no.” Harry rushes to his side, cradling Louis’ face in his hands and forcing their eyes to meet. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I’m still—shit.” Louis ducks his head and buries it in the crook of Harry’s neck. “I’m cheating, I’m— I’m lying to her and lying to everyone and—“

Harry kisses the top of his head and wraps his arms tightly around him. “Do you love her?”

“What? Of course not,” Louis says, frowning, craning up to look incredulously at Harry. The _I love you_ dies in his throat, but Louis thinks, from the way Harry’s eyes light up as they meet his, that he gets it anyway.

“I’m not—I’m not going to tell you that this is—that what we’re doing is okay. But things happen, and sometimes circumstances just—it happens, yeah?” Louis nods, his eyes fluttering shut.

“I know we should—I should feel bad, about what I’m doing. But Lou. You—you feel this.” Harry’s hand settles against his chest. “How could—how could we not?”

Louis surges forward to capture Harry’s lips in his own, sliding both hands into Harry’s hair and tugging so he tilts his head and opens his mouth, granting Louis better access.

“How could we not,” he repeats, voice hoarse, once they separate.

There isn’t much to do while on lockdown, but they don’t mind. Louis comes out of his shower later to find that Harry’s gotten room service, a full spread of food waiting for him in front of the bed, where a still-naked Harry waits for him, too.

“Do you ever wear clothes?” Louis asks, rolling his eyes as he finds a pair of black briefs to put on.

“Nope,” Harry replies easily, popping the _p_ as he rolls onto his stomach and gives Louis a full view of his ass. “I like the freedom.”

“You like to be stared at, more like,” Louis says, sitting down on the bed next to him, his fingers skidding over Harry’s back.

“Hmm,” Harry murmurs, and arches his back into the touch. “That too.”

“Starving, are you?”

“I’m a growing boy,” Harry replies, grinning, and rolls onto his back again. “I didn’t know what you’d want, so I got a bit of everything.”

Louis eyes the food, taking in the variety of it: there’s different types of bread and cheese; a rather large stack of pancakes surrounded by bowls of fruit; pastries piled in a small basket; bacon cooked to a crisp next to a plate of eggs, three different styles, and two bowls of what looks like oatmeal, with different toppings.

“I’ve never been picky about food,” he admits, thinking back to harsh winters in Donny when they had to ration their food, to Germany and waiting for their new provisions to arrive, living on canned beans and oats cooked with water for weeks on end.

“There has to be something you prefer,” Harry insists, almost a question, “or something you don’t like?”

“I don’t—“Louis starts, then eyes the food again. “Maybe not the oats. Ate enough of those to last a lifetime.”

Harry nods and sits up, pressing a firm kiss to Louis’ lips.

They eat silently, with their thighs bumping together every so often which makes it hard for Louis to stop smiling long enough to take a bite of his food.

“This is nice,” he says as he takes a second mug of tea from Harry. “I’ve never been one for snow, but I can’t really complain about it now.”

Harry hums in reply. “New York always got too cold in the winter. We’d get snow for days on end, and we’d be locked inside with nothing to do.”

“Kind of like right now,” Louis says, and Harry pinches his leg.

“I’ll give you something to do.” Harry slides his hands up Louis’ sides, tickling him. Louis flinches away from the touch, giggling, and Harry follows him, falling half on top of him, their lips only inches apart. Louis braces himself for the second round of tickles, but the hands on his sides relax and grip at his hips instead, just as Harry lowers his mouth to Louis’ in a scorching kiss.  

Louis is breathless by the time they break apart. “What was it like, growing up there?”

“Big. Loud. Busy,” Harry says. “We were travelling most of the time, anyway. There was always a show to play, an event to attend. Didn’t have a lot of friends, you know? There wasn’t any time.”

“Doesn’t sound much fun.”

“It wasn’t. I mean, I had Gemma, and you know her, she’s amazing. It’s not like I had it bad or anything. I had a good childhood, yeah?” He doesn’t say _compared to you_ , but he doesn’t need to, and Louis hates the pity tainting his words. “It’s just that looking back, I can’t really remember—I don’t have any outstanding happy memories, you know? That has to mean something, not being able to remember the happy times in your life.”

“Maybe it’s just that they were all good, so they don’t stand out.”

Harry tilts his head, considering, and smiles. “Yeah, but. Actually—there was this one summer. Mom and Robin rented this cabin up north, in this little town—I don’t even remember the name. But it was right on the lake, and surrounded by maple trees, and it had this huge balcony on the master bedroom that Mom didn’t like because it got too sunny, so Gemma and I would sleep there.”

“Sounds pretty nice,” Louis says, uncertain what Harry wants to hear.

“Yeah. We spent two or three weeks there, maybe, but it felt like we’d been there all summer. It was right before Gem started getting really into clothes and boys and all that stuff.”

“And before you got into clothes and boys and all that stuff,” Louis adds, smirking, and Harry snorts.

“Yeah, yeah, that too. It was—it was really nice, you know? No shows, no press, no fans. Felt like the one time I was allowed to be a kid.”

“Yeah, I can imagine the hardship of growing up rich and famous,” Louis says jokingly, but can tell by the way Harry looks at him that he knows what he means.

“Shut up,” Harry says, and shoves him. “There was this shed in the back, you know? I guess the owner kept his tools there or something, and he forgot to lock it, or thought no one would go there, but Gemma and I found a tractor and thought it would be fun to take a ride, yeah? Except we were 10 and 12, and we had no idea what you were doing.”

“Did you crash it?”

“We didn’t even know how to turn it on! But I cut my hand open trying to stick a screwdriver in the ignition, and I had to get stitches and everything.” Harry shoves his hand in Louis’ face, and once he moves back a bit, he can pick up the white bits of skin where the wound once was, spreading across his palm and around his thumb. Unthinkingly, he grabs Harry’s hand and presses his lips to it. He hears Harry gasp, and he darts his tongue out, licking over the scar before biting into the fleshy part of Harry’s palm. “Asshole,” Harry says, but there’s no heat in it, and when Louis looks up he finds Harry inches away from his face, pouting. “I once split my lip too, you know? In case you were planning on kissing every—“

Louis rolls his eyes. “Shut up,” he says, shaking his head, and Harry giggles. “That was awful.”

Harry shrugs, looking at him defiantly, and Louis feels himself smiling at the sight, so he leans in and kisses him.

Louis thinks back to summers spent working alongside his dad, to hungry winters when the snow kept him out of school, to all those months he spent feeling lost before Harry joined the tour, and he can’t stop wondering if he’s ever been happy before this.

He thinks about the fact that they’ve only been doing this for two months, and it hits him as Harry rolls them over to pin him into the bed that he doesn’t want to do anything else for as long as he’s living.

Harry shucks off his own shirt as he straddles Louis, placing both hands on Louis’ chest for balance as he grinds down on him. “You feel so good like this,” Harry says, and starts somehow working on the buttons on Louis’ shirt while maintaining the rhythm of his hips.

Louis wants to say something back, tell Harry how incredible he looks looming over him, but he barely manages a throaty moan when he opens his mouth just as Harry’s nail catches on his nipple.

“You—” he begins, but then Harry is scrambling off of him, hands sliding off his slacks at the same time as he closes his mouth over Louis’ overworked nipple and sucks. “Christ.”

Harry’s hands unbutton Louis’ trousers easily, pushing them down along his underwear to free Louis’ erection and wrap a fist around it, jerking him a few times before moving back on top of him, sitting back on his thighs _just_ _so_ so their cocks slide together as they kiss.

It feels like they’ve been kissing for ages when Harry breaks away and sits up; he takes one of Louis’ hands and brings two fingers to his mouth, circling his tongue around them. Then, not breaking eye contact and almost in slow motion, he directs them behind him, down to his parted cheeks.

“Will you fuck me, Lou?” he asks in a murmur, his voice steady but uncertain, and Louis crushes their lips together, his fingers sliding down to the softness of Harry’s hole.

It happens in a heartbeat; everything is moving too fast for Louis, who wants to memorize the feel of his fingertips against every inch of Harry’s body, but in a blur of wet kisses and reassuring smiles, of moans and groans and Harry nearly begging for more, he finds himself hovering over Harry, their eyes locked as he aligns himself and slowly pushes in.

It’s too much, and not enough, and every profanity Louis has learned in his life threatens to leave his lips once he’s slid all the way in. He stops, unable to move without coming, and he has to close his eyes and count to ten before he can breathe again.

He focuses on Harry: lovely, beautiful Harry, who’s smiling reassuringly at Louis, but it doesn’t hide the crease between his eyebrows. Louis freezes, panicked, and glances down between them to see Harry’s waning erection. He immediately sneaks a hand down and tries to wrap it around Harry, absently noting that this is the first time he’s touched another man’s dick, but Harry bats him away.

“No—not yet. I can—I can get hard again, just from this,” he says, and lifts his hips, taking Louis impossibly deeper.

Louis’ eyelids flutter shut against the explosion of pleasure, and Harry pulls him closer to kiss him wetly, starting an undulating motion with his hips to urge Louis to move.

“It’s normal—it’s okay, it’s still good for me,” Harry says, breathless. “Come on, Lou, fuck me.”

Louis nods, pressing their lips together again, and after a moment of consideration, he starts thrusting back against him, meeting Harry halfway, pleasure bursting inside him every time he bottoms out.

Harry starts fattening up again as Louis builds up a faster pace, brushing against Louis’ stomach when he folds over Harry to kiss him again, moaning against his lips.

“Is this—is this good for you?” Louis manages to ask between thrusts.

“You have no idea,” Harry says, and grins up at him; an entire kaleidoscope of butterflies come to life in Louis’ stomach. “Is this—“

“Perfect,” Louis replies, finding it impossible to get more than a word out at a time and  trying to convey his feelings with his smile, instead.

He doesn’t see it coming, but his orgasm hits him like a truck, ceasing all movement as every muscle in his body tenses at once before he spills inside Harry. Seconds stretch infinitely, the world around him disappears and it all narrows down to Harry’s soft lips on his and his erratic heart beating out of his chest.

It’s a few minutes –or hours, maybe days—before Louis can open his eyes and focus on the body beneath him. His hands and legs are shaking as he pulls out, teeth rattling together, and it’s the most worn out he’s felt in his life.

“I have that effect in people,” Harry says, smug, when Louis tells him so.

He laughs softly when Louis huffs and shoves him, and it’s when Harry tries to retaliate by sitting on him that Louis notices that he’s still hard.

“Hey,” he says, hands settling on Harry’s hips, “come here.”

Harry shuffles until he’s seated on Louis’ chest, knees on either side of him, and then Louis lifts up his head and takes the head of Harry’s cock into his mouth, wrapping one hand around the shaft and jerking him fast.

“You—” Harry starts saying, but he’s interrupted by a loud moan as Louis presses his tongue into his slit, “—are incredible.”

He comes right as Louis sneaks a hand between his cheeks, rubbing a thumb over his hole, and whatever Louis doesn’t catch with his tongue streaks his cheek. It feels weirdly like marking, and Louis finds himself wishing for more.

Harry collapses on top of Louis and kisses him chastely before darting his tongue out and licking his own come off of Louis’ face, and Louis grunts as all of the blood in his body rushes to his groin once again.

“Thank you,” Harry says at last, once he’s cleaned every last drop, and then he buries his head in the crook of Louis’ neck and closes his eyes.

*

“Who knows?” Louis asks later that day, head resting on Harry’s chest as they both come down from their third set of orgasms. He’s wearing Harry’s chain around his neck; put it on after taking it off Harry so he could kiss his neck better, and now he can’t stop touching it, twirling his fingers around it over and over. “Of your friends.”

“That I like men?” Louis nods, looking up to meet Harry’s eyes. “Elizabeth knew pretty early on, I didn’t even have to tell her. I told Gemma—she was the first, and I think she told my mum, so they both know. I’ve got this friend in New York, Zayn. I think you’d like him. He sort of helped me learn the ropes of, you know—“

“Gay sex?” Louis asks sharply, unable to stop himself.

Harry laughs, his chest vibrating against Louis’ cheek, and he brings Louis’ hand to his mouth, kissing his palm. “Of how to live freely, without getting killed.”

Louis chokes and lifts himself up on his elbows. “Shit—I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Lou, really,” Harry says, and kisses him. “It’s not like most people are aware of—how dangerous it can be, to be like me—“

 _Us_ , Louis wants to say, but the word gets stuck in his throat. He pulls himself up so that he’s got his back against Harry’s chest, tilts his head to press a kiss to his throat. Harry’s arms wrap around him tightly, and he leans in, finding Louis’ lips.

“There are luxuries that I just can’t afford—things I can’t simply go about the way a heterosexual would. It’s not—it isn’t safe, for us, people like me, to live the way you would.”

Louis stays silent for a long time, lost in the feeling of Harry’s hands around his chest, holding him close. “It’s bullshit,” he says, surprised by the raw tone of his voice.

“Yeah,” Harry says, and tightens his arms around him. “It is.”

Louis closes his eyes and tries to picture a world where he could come home to Harry every night.

“I wish we could—” Louis says, later, once he’s almost certain Harry has drifted off. “If it wasn’t unsafe, impossible, I’d go up on that stage tonight and tell everyone about the way you make me feel.”

*

It’s not like Louis has a wild past full of sexual partners, but he thinks that even if he did, the amount of sex he has in the two days he and Harry spend holed up in Boston would still beat any of his records. Even hypothetically, Louis can’t see himself wanting anyone as much as he wants Harry.

He wakes up the second morning with Harry’s lips wrapped tightly around his cock, and it’s less than a minute before he’s shooting down his throat, a moan erupting from his chest as he melts into the mattress.

“Jesus, Styles, warn a guy, will you?” he says, out of breath; still, he pulls Harry up so that he’s straddling Louis, and then takes him into his hand to jerk him rough and fast.

They shower together, and Louis fucks Harry for the second time against the cold tile wall, biting at his neck as he shoves two fingers inside of him and finds him still slick and open from the night before.

They talk about it a lot, too: Harry tells him about the time Ben suggested they had a threesome and it ended up being both guys trying to fuck Harry at the same time, the stretch so much he thought he was being split open. Louis listens intently, his jaw going slack and his hands tightening into fists as his hatred for Ben grows exponentially, but Harry assures him that he had wanted it, at the time, and that both Ben and his friend had been careful and sweet and had comforted him once he’d told them he wanted to stop.

“Did you—were there a lot of men, before Ben?” Louis asks, because as much as it hurts to hear about Harry with people other than him, he still wants to learn everything there is to know about him.

“I—“ Harry falters. “I guess? I did a lot of exploring, when I first realized, you know? It’s not easy, but once you know what you’re into, what you’re looking for, it’s easier to pick out cruising spots. New York is especially good for it, because it’s so busy, people don’t really pay that close attention to what everyone else is doing. ”

Louis tries to swallow the lump in his throat and ends up talking around it instead, hoping Harry won’t hear the effect his words are having on him. “Sounds like a lot of stress. Was it—did you enjoy yourself?” The words sound different than he meant when he hears them come out of his mouth, and Harry waggles his eyebrows at him.

“It was stressful, yeah, but it was also freeing, being around men who were going through the same trouble for the same reasons as me. Made me feel less alone, you know? New York is a big city. It gets lonely pretty easily.”

“You poor, rich little boy,” Louis mocks, pouting, and Harry cackles and slaps his arm, pressing his lips there the moment his hand is gone. “Did you date anyone? Before Ben, I mean.”

“Not really, no. It’s hard to keep up a relationship when you’re constantly travelling,” Harry says, and Louis snorts. “I lived in too close quarters with my family; we were always together. It wasn’t exactly easy to sneak people in.” Louis tightens his arms around Harry and drops a kiss to his shoulder. “There were a few boys that I saw more than once. I wouldn’t say we were dating, though. It was more like an arrangement, you know? Had to learn what to do from someone. We were just helping each other out, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Louis hums, noncommittal—he hates that he can’t stifle his reaction, but Harry doesn’t seem to mind, shifting his position between Louis’ arms so that they’re facing each other and pulling Louis into a deep kiss.

“I never—none of it was ever like this, though,” Harry adds, blushing, once they separate.

Louis smiles despite himself, pressing his mouth to Harry’s once again. His heart is hammering against his ribcage, desire thrumming in his veins, and he feels as though he might burst any second, like he’s moments from breaking at the seams and spilling his feelings for Harry all over the floor.   

“Did you ever—” Harry starts, and stops himself, then starts again. “Was there ever anyone—“

Louis shakes his head, because Harry already knows about Danielle, and there hasn’t really been anyone else. Harry’s eyes are guarded, and he nods stiffly, avoiding Louis’ eyes.

“I had your picture, when I was deployed,” Louis whispers a moment later, because he hates seeing Harry like this, will do anything to reassure him that Louis is as in on this as he is. Harry perks up at that, tensing in Louis’ arms, so Louis goes on. “We weren’t allowed many things—they made me leave my guitar at training, but I brought my notebook, a picture of this girl—my high school sweetheart—and a copy of a magazine with your face on the cover. Got it still, safe back home under the mattress.”

When Louis meets his gaze, Harry’s looking at him with wide eyes and parted lips, like he’s seeing him for the first time. “God, Louis.” Harry chokes up, “God.”

Their lips meet again, and then they’re melting into each other, pressed together so tightly that Louis can feel Harry’s heartbeat pounding against his chest.

“You know I—” Louis says when they pull apart, “I’ve never—”

“I know that I’m the first, Lou,” Harry says patiently.

“No—that’s not—I mean, yeah, but that isn’t what I meant.” Harry frowns slightly, tilting his head in confusion, and Louis can’t stop himself from kissing the line between his eyebrows until it’s smooth again. “I mean that—” he starts, and takes a long breath. “No one has ever made me feel the way you do.”

Harry’s face lights up as a Christmas tree, and he hides it in Louis’ chest for a few moments; when he moves back to kiss Louis again his eyes are shiny, and he looks more beautiful than Louis has ever seen him.

“You,” Harry says, breaking the kiss apart, “are the greatest feeling,”—another kiss—“I have ever felt.”

*

Leaving Boston after two days of nothing but Harry proves to be harder than Louis had anticipated. As soon as he gets back, he’s back on his pills, courtesy of Jerry Lee, who awaits him with a new bottle and a promise to let him try the stuff he got from a new guy, but not even his usual dose chased with a glass of gin is enough to shake the uneasiness that has settled in his stomach since he got on the plane leaving Massachusetts.

He and Harry manage to steal some moments together, the way they did before, but it doesn’t seem like enough, now that they know what it can be like. It doesn’t help that Liam has started acting suspicious around them, either, constantly probing them with questions and imposing his presence on them whenever they have free time, almost like he’s trying to sabotage them.

It’s been a week since they’ve been back on tour, and Louis hasn’t kissed Harry in two days. He’s drinking more than he was before, taking any chance he gets to down whatever is available, and he can tell, even though Harry doesn’t say anything, that he notices. Louis wonders what he would say if he knew about the pills.

He’s spent all day with Niall, working on some new arrangements they’re trying out for a song. He’s got two hours before he has to be on stage again, and he knows Harry is in his dressing room, waiting for a call from Gemma, so he stops at the convenience store by the hotel to get them both lunch and then heads to his own room, planning to change into his stage clothes before he goes over to Harry’s.

Harry’s already there when he walks in, eyes sunken and mouth pressed tight, and Louis knows as soon as he sees him that something’s gone wrong.

“Danielle called,” Harry says, the moment Louis sets the bags down. “Said it’s important.”

Louis gapes at him, slowly processing the information. “You talked to her?”

“She left a message. The concierge wouldn’t stop bugging me until I took it. Thought I was you, I guess.”

“It’s the hair,” Louis jokes, but Harry’s scowl doesn’t disappear. He shrugs his jacket off and toes off his shoes before he makes it over to the bed, taking the spot next to Harry. “What’s going on?”

“I told you, Danielle called—“

“Harry, you knew about Danielle, it’s not like I’ve kept it hidden, how does this change—“

Harry sighs, and rubs a hand over his face, as if he’s trying to calm himself down. “She’s coming to see you. Got a plane ticket and everything, will be here tonight. Paul’s sending someone to pick her up, but she wanted you to be there, too.”

The moment the words are out, it feels like the ground is shifting beneath Louis, crumbling under his feet, leaving him nowhere to run.

“She’s staying in your room,” Harry says, and his voice is so sad it makes Louis’ heart constrict. “Paul didn’t think it necessary to book another one, since she’s your wife. It was too late to make any new arrangements, so…”

“Harry—”

Louis doesn’t know what to say, his mind racing as he tries to comprehend everything that’s happening around him, but Harry’s staring at him with sad eyes, resignation written over his face, and Louis feels like he’s just lost a battle he didn’t even know he was fighting.

“I think I’m gonna go to my room, and get some rest,” Harry says after a moment, shaking his head. “I’ll see you later, yeah?” He doesn’t wait for Louis’ reply before he exits the room, and despite how badly Louis wants to run after him, he doesn’t.   

*

Danielle’s arrival feels like a metaphorical cloud has taken residence above Louis’ head. Harry carefully retreats, staying clear of them as soon as she shows up backstage in a floral sundress that’s completely inappropriate for the eastern weather, and Louis aches with the need to see him but can’t seem to find a single moment away from Danielle.  

Louis doesn’t bother pretending he’s interested in her presence once they’re alone. It was easy enough at the venue, with everyone fussing over her, eyes dark with lust—and if Louis was a good person, a good _man_ , it probably would have bothered him that all of his friends so obviously want to fuck his wife—but as it is, all he can think about is Harry.

He gets drunk enough that night before they get to the room that, despite her insistence, he can’t manage to keep it up long enough to get inside her. She sits on his face, before he can object, smirking as he yelps when he finds out she wasn’t wearing any underwear, but Louis doesn’t have it in him to pretend he’s interested in making her feel good, and after a few laps of his tongue, he moves away to take a breath and tells her apologetically that he has a headache. Danielle huffs, annoyed, but rolls away from him with a hand between her legs; Louis hears her moan softly with her back turned to him and sighs, rolling onto his side and forcing himself to sleep.

He wakes up the next morning with warm lips around his cock; he moans in contentment, still in a dream haze, then slides a hand down to cup Harry’s face, only to find a softer jaw and longer hair, and he jerks back like he’s been burnt, scrambling to sit up on the bed. “You can’t do that,” he says, alarmed, “Danielle—you can’t—”

“Lou, babe—are you okay?” she asks, voice tinged with concern.

“You can’t just start—that doesn’t—” Louis’ breathing is coming out ragged.

Concern is slowly morphing into confusion on Danielle’s face. “Did something happen? Are you—” She brings a hand to her lips, and Louis understands, then, that this is it. He’s been neglecting her for so long that he didn’t realize he had to be more careful, now that he has Harry, and now she knows. He swallows, failing to take a deep breath, and looks over to Danielle, whose eyes are filled to the brim with tears.

“Is it the nightmares again?” she asks, just as he’s about to start making excuses, and relief washes over Louis.

His stomach clenches uncomfortably, and he nods. “Yeah—I just. I can’t— I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t push it, and Louis gets up with the excuse of a shower, hiding himself in the bathroom for longer than necessary, three pills already in his system, trying to calm himself down and rid of the guilt that’s settled in his gut and twists painfully every time he thinks about Harry.

Danielle isn’t in the room when he comes out, which is a relief, and Louis spends twenty minutes trying to get reception to connect him to Harry’s room, at the end of which they finally tell him that Harry has requested not to receive any calls for the time being.

He heads over to the venue, hoping to catch Harry there, but instead, he finds Liam, who looks somewhere between annoyed and amused, talking to a very tipsy Danielle. He hands her over, rolling his eyes at Louis in a way that rubs him wrong, and tells him to, “keep an eye on his girl next time,” before walking off.

Louis sighs, holding her by the waist, and directs her towards his dressing room, which is unusually empty. He props her up on the velvet sofa and hands her a water bottle, praying that she won’t get clingy the way she usually is when she’s drunk.

“Liam said you’ve been spending a lot of time with Harry,” Danielle says after a while, giggling.

Louis’ world tilts.  “Yeah,” he replies, nonchalant, avoiding her eyes. “He’s fun to hang.”

Danielle hums, shuffling closer on the sofa. “Interesting,” she says, her voice now void of the previous amusement. “So you know if it’s true?”

Louis heart pounds, but he doesn’t look up, answering as dismissively as possible. “If what’s true?”

“What people say about him, you know.” She lowers her voice. “That he’s a faggot.” The word sounds so ugly coming out of Danielle’s mouth, tainted by her prejudice, by her ignorance. She’s smiling at him with something between curiosity and morbid fascination, and Louis is revolted by it.

“I don’t know where those rumours came from—“

“Come on, Lou, everyone is talking about it, it’s even leaked into _other_ circles,” she says, and shifts so that she’s pressed against him on the sofa. “He wouldn’t be the only one, nowadays, you’ve heard about Cole Porter—don’t they know each other? Maybe they’re—“

“Harry’s not with Cole Porter, Danielle,” Louis snaps, his voice louder than intended.

“But he _is_ a fag,” Danielle says, smugly, and Louis hates her.

He shrugs, and she looks at him with narrow eyes, her smile fading. “Why didn’t you want to tell me?” she asks after a few moments, her voice tinted with the fake concern that he’s learn to identify by now. When he looks over her eyes are wide and wet, but there’s a smile pulling at her lips. “Lou—is there something I should know?”

Panic surges in his chest, and he recoils, as if the accusing tone in Danielle’s voice offends him, as if she isn’t right to suspect. He scoffs, moving away from her, ignoring the rush of blood in his ears and the voice inside his head that’s saying over and over that _he fucked up._

“Don’t try and play detective with me, darling, you’re not smart enough to pull it off,” he says, feigning apathy. “I didn’t answer because it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care about Harry Styles or if he’s a fag.”

An uncomfortable weight settles on his chest as the words leave his mouth, but his answer seems to satisfy Danielle, who nods stiffly and doesn’t bring Harry up for the rest of the afternoon.

*

Harry still is avoiding him.

Louis is on his third drink in less than an hour, and he broke his last gram with Elvis during sound check earlier, which means that he’s well on his way to drunk. It’s been two days, and Harry’s still avoiding him.

Danielle has been quiet since his outburst the previous day, but her hand keeps sneaking down his chest and she presses too-wet kisses to his cheek whenever Louis’ gone too long without saying anything to her. He wishes he could find someone to entertain her, but it seems that there’s one thing everyone on tour seems to be respectful of, and that’s each other’s women. He wonders if he could convince Liam to sleep with Danielle now that Sophia has left him, take her off Louis’ hands for a while so he can talk to Harry, but Liam’s been on to him lately, and Louis hasn’t come up with a good enough reason to explain why he can’t stand the thought of touching his supposed wife.

It takes an hour, but Louis manages to shrug Danielle off when he spots the sound engineer leaving the room where they’re hanging out and makes up a quick excuse about needing to adjust his mic before the show before running after him.

He’s meant to be on stage at eight, after Carl and before Elvis, but Harry’s playing at seven sharp, and before he can come up with any real plan, Louis finds himself standing backstage, trying not to stare as Harry plays an acoustic version of one of his older songs, all dolled up in his black pinstripes and crisp white shirt, his red bow gone and the first two buttons undone.

Harry’s song is soft and nostalgic, a quiet beg to someone to not let go, and even if it was written long before they met, Louis heart jumps into his throat as Harry belts out words that sound like they’re directed at him.

He makes the decision in a split second; one moment he’s standing behind the curtain, eyes fixed on Harry, and the next he’s grabbing one of the spare guitars, silently hoping that it’s tuned, and stepping into view.

Harry gapes for a moment before he manages a fake smile. “Look what we got here,” he says, and Louis hears the silent question, even if the audience doesn’t.

“Having a good time, Harold?”

“As always,” Harry replies easily, but there’s a strain in his voice, like he’s trying to figure out Louis’ next move.

“Hello folks,” Louis mutters into the mic, turning towards the crowd and hoping it won’t come out too slurred. “Hope y’all are alright with me interrupting Harry’s set.”

The crowd cheers deafeningly, and Louis finds himself smirking. He shoots Harry a look and finds him still studying Louis with a schooled expression.

“Harry wrote this song a while back, and he’s been too nervous to play it for y’all, so I figured I could come up here and give him a little push.”

Harry’s eyes widen for a moment, and he takes a step towards Louis, as if planning to stop him, but Louis dives straight into the song, strumming enthusiastically before Harry can do anything.

He sings the first verse by himself, with Harry by his side, trying to hide his shock, but Harry takes over for the bridge and Louis joins him for the chorus, the crowd seemingly stunned into silence by their voices.

Louis tells himself to keep his eyes on the crowd, but keeps sneaking glances at Harry until finally, by the time they get to the second bridge, he angles his body towards Harry completely and sings the song directly at him. To his surprise, Harry mimics him.

Harry’s eyes are wild when they lock with his, and Louis can tell that he’s angry from the tight set of his shoulders and the way his hand holds the microphone tight enough to leave a print, but there’s something else there, too, and he doesn’t look away when Louis smiles at him. They hold eye contact until the end of the song, and by the time he belts out the last words, Harry’s smile is mirroring his.  

Louis tightly grips the guitar’s neck when his hands start shaking, feeling like he might burst open, but he doesn’t look away until he strums the last chord, and then he takes a bow, guitar still in his hand, and smiles at the crowd.

“Wasn’t that something?” he says, and flees the stage.

He manages to down a pill before Harry finds him in the corridor, and he doesn’t try to stop it as Harry grabs him by the arm and drags him inside his dressing room, yanking him forward before he can sneak away.

“What was that?” he asks angrily.

“It was brilliant, wasn’t it?” Louis tries, even if everything in Harry’s expression is shouting the opposite.

“You can’t just do something like that just to prove a goddamned point,” Harry says, fuming, “which, by the way, I still don’t know what the hell you were trying to prove—“

“I thought—“ Louis starts, and idly notices his hands are shaking. “I expected it to mean something to you, too.”

Harry freezes ever so slightly, and maybe if Louis weren’t so attuned to him, he wouldn’t have noticed, but he’s got a lifetime of staring at his face and months of thinking of nothing else, and he notices. It takes no time for Harry to school his expression back into anger but Louis _notices_ , and something sparks in his chest.

“It doesn’t matter what it means to me, Louis. It’s what it means to the rest of the world.”

“What does that mean?” Louis asks, a little slurred as the pills start to kick in.

“It’s easy for you to go on stage and sing a love song next to me when you’ve got your wife waiting for you when you step down.”

“She’s not my wife—” Louis tries, and Harry snorts.

“It doesn’t _matter_ , Louis! You don’t get it—what we just did on stage, that changes nothing for you, but it can get _me_ killed.”

“No one’s going to—“

Harry kicks one of the pillows strewn across the floor, and it misses Louis by a foot but still makes him flinch. “People get killed for being gay every day, Louis,” Harry spits, “Just because you don’t hear about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen— you have a privilege that I don’t—“

“There’s no privilege in hiding,” Louis throws back, “in lying, in pretending I don’t feel the way I feel. I’m in this as much as you are, Harry, it’s not any easier for me than it is for you.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Louis,” Harry says with a laugh, and walks away, slamming the door behind him.

*

It takes him forty minutes to find Harry, and when he does, he stops dead in his tracks, because Harry’s eyes are red rimmed and his hands are balled into fists, and in the time they’ve known each other Louis has never thought of him as unreachable, but there’s no other word for the way he’s holding himself in front of Louis right now.

“H—” he says quietly, debating whether or not to step inside the bathroom.

Harry’s head snaps up to meet him, and he lets out a bitter laugh as he brings one hand up to rub at his eyes. He doesn’t say anything, but his vicious stare makes Louis’ insides constrict.

“Can we—” Louis stops himself, but takes a step forward, and just like that, Harry takes one step back.

“Can we what?” he asks wildly. “Talk? Fuck?! Pretend you’re not going to fuck me over in a couple hours when you forget how much you like my cock?”

A shudder goes up Louis’ spine, makes his knees buckle, and he thinks for a moment that he’s not opposed to dropping to the floor and begging for forgiveness, if that’s what it’ll take. He’s lost enough in a lifetime to know fully well he can’t handle losing Harry.

“I fucked up—“

“What else is new?” Harry spits and laughs again, bordering on manic. “What do you want, Louis?”

“You,” Louis says right away. “Only you, always you.”

The tense set of Harry’s shoulders gives out for a second, his eyes softening around the edges, the snarl on his mouth letting up a notch. And then: “Where does your wife think you are right now?”

“I don’t care—it doesn’t matter. She’s nothing.” Harry raises an eyebrow at him, and it makes Louis’ head spin that he can’t figure out if he’s getting somewhere or not. “I’d choose you. Any day. I’ll choose you right now, if you want. Tell her it’s over, just—“ Louis tastes something salty, and it takes a moment to realize it’s his own tears. “I want you, I love you.”

Harry sags completely against the door, closing his eyes, and Louis takes it as his queue to move closer. He takes Harry’s hands in his and presses their foreheads together. “Harry, please.”

Harry presses their lips together, painful and biting, and when he pulls away, Louis notices he’s crying, too.

“I love you,” Louis says again, because it’s easier to shed his own truth than to wait for Harry’s.

An unintelligible whisper leaves Harry’s lips before they close over Louis’ again, and Louis doesn’t need to hear it to know what it is.

“Please give me a chance,” he whispers when they pull apart, and Harry’s eyes are still wet when he nods in agreement.

*

They hold hands until they reach the main hallway, and then Louis pushes Harry against the wall and kisses him breathless, sliding his hands up and down his chest and pulling him impossibly closer by the waist. Harry shivers when Louis bites his lips right before stepping away, and Louis feels like crying, all over again.

“I love you,” he whispers for good measure, one more time, before he takes off for the stage. He’s due in less than ten minutes, and he knows everyone is bound to be looking for him, and yet all he can think about is finding Danielle and asking her to leave.

He’s so deep into his fantasy, trying to figure out the best way to break the news to her, picturing himself going back to Harry at the end of every scenario, that he doesn’t even notice there’s a crowd hanging backstage at first.

“The rumours are true, of course; Louis wouldn’t tell me for sure, but I know.”

Louis hears Danielle before he sees her, surrounded by a small group of men who are paying more attention to her cleavage than the story that she’s telling. He stops, and looks back at Harry, who’s frozen in place, his eyes wide with fear.

“Apparently he’s got a crush on Lou, poor little darling, following him around like a lost puppy.” Danielle’s laugh is soon followed by the crowd around her, and anger is boiling in Louis’ stomach. “I should have realized sooner, you see, when Louis mentioned this boy that wouldn’t leave him alone, wouldn’t stop bugging him, but I thought it was just a fan—“

Harry whimpers behind him, and when Louis turns around again, his expression has switched from terrified to enraged, eyes wild.

It comes as such a surprise, the burning pain of a palm against his cheek, that it takes a moment before Louis realizes what’s happened. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, but Harry shakes his head, jaw set tight, and takes off.

“Lou, mate, there you are,” Niall’s voice says somewhere around him, and there’s fingers snapping in front of his face. “It’s time to—wait, are you alright?”

Louis’ cheek feels hot where Harry slapped him, pulsing as all the blood rushes to it, the only part of his body that doesn’t feel numb. He stands, motionless, staring as Harry’s figure rushes out of view, his ears buzzing and his lungs too heavy for him to breathe.

Hands shove him towards the stage and someone puts his guitar in his arms, adjusting the strap for him as he’s ushered forward and through the curtains, towards hundreds of expectant eyes. He stands there, frozen, for what feels like an eternity, until the sound of someone clearing their throat startles him and he looks behind him to see Niall smiling apologetically and signalling him to play. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and lets his fingers find the chords.

The show must go on.


	6. 1959

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: there's an explicit homophobic attack in this chapter!!!!! please beware if this is something you are sensitive to!!! it was really hard to write it so be mindful of the content!!! it isn't too graphic but i don't think that makes it any less upsetting.

 

 

Life after tour is surprisingly less eventful than Louis imagined. He wakes up, smokes a joint, pops a pill, and goes back to sleep. He gets up and fiddles with his guitar some mornings before getting drunk on the couch and passing out in the afternoon; other mornings, he can’t make himself get out of bed.

He writes, and writes and writes: songs and letters and short stories that all end up being about the same man with green eyes and too-red lips; all of which end up in tragedy and have him ripping the paper in half more often than not.

Oliver shows up every Thursday with his groceries, his prescription and whatever drugs he manages to snag for him; some weeks he gets luckier, and the days go by in a blur. It was Niall’s idea—though Louis suspects Rachel from their label was the one to push it—to get Louis an assistant.

“Someone who makes sure all your needs are met, so you can focus solely on your music,” Niall had said, though to Louis it had sounded more like, “Someone to babysit you and make sure you don’t choke on your own vomit.”

He was supposed to move in with Louis, but Louis wouldn’t have it, so they settled for this. Oliver checks up on him three times a week and makes sure his refrigerator is full and his bills up to date, and in return for Louis keeping himself alive, he indulges Louis by smoking with him and not telling anyone about Louis’ addictions. Not that it’s a secret, anyway.

Louis is certain that wasn’t Rachel’s idea when they concocted this plan, but that’s what Louis does: he takes what he’s given and bends and twists until he manages to make it fit his needs. It’s never ideal, but he scrapes by. Dirt poor or filthy rich, he’s always just scraped by.

Days and weeks and months blur together. He accumulates birthday and Christmas cards by the door where Oli dumps all his mail—invitations to events and certificates earned by the sales he’s long stopped caring about—crowding the narrow space, left untouched.

He thinks about Harry, sometimes, in those strange intervals when he comes down too soon and has to wait a few hours before taking the next dose (“Do as you please, Louis,” Oli had said, “but watch it. Overdose is no fun business”). Louis had thought he wouldn’t mind, when Oli said it; more than once, he’d fantasized about downing half the bottle instead of his recommended two pills, but then he’d asked about it, on a rare visit to the hospital he hadn’t been able to get out of, and he’d realized there were possibilities other than death, and to keep living this way sounded a little less terrible, in comparison.

He thinks about Harry when he’s just woken up, on the rare days he gets more than four hours of sleep and wakes almost completely sober, aching and hollow.

Sometimes not even the drugs and the whiskey are enough to keep him from his thoughts. He smashes a bottle against the window on February first, when he makes the mistake of turning on the radio and the hosts won’t stop talking about Harry’s birthday bash in New York. He ends up cutting his arm while attempting to clean the broken glass, and then he locks himself in the music room and leaves a mess of blood and splinters for Oli to clean the next time he comes by.

It’s not great, but time goes by, and he stays alive.

*

Louis wakes up one morning in March to the sound of the phone ringing. He rolls over, pulling a pillow over his head, and tries to will himself back to sleep.

“Did you get it?” Niall asks excitedly as soon as Louis picks up, shortly after the phone starts ringing for a fourth time.

“Get what?” Louis asks, voice gravelly with sleep.

“Were you sleeping? Lou, it’s three in the afternoon—we start recording in a week, you can’t keep this up if we’re going to go on tour.”

Louis huffs, rubbing at his eyes. “I recall you partying every night last time we were on tour.”

Niall groans, but doesn’t argue, which Louis appreciates. His head is killing him; he doesn’t remember rolling into bed until after the sun was up, and he vaguely recalls breaking into a new case the night before, after he’d finished his whiskey.

“Okay,” Niall says after a moment, “go to your mailbox. Open it. See the fancy envelope? With the gold trimmings?”

Louis goes to the table by the door and finds it sitting at the top, crisp white with extravagant lettering, and he has to hold back the urge to rip it to pieces.  “I got it,” Louis says, and tries to focus to read the words on the front, but they blur together, bringing another jolt of pain to his temple. “What is it?”

“Can’t you read?” Niall asks, exasperated, and then, at Louis’ lack of answer, “It’s the Grammys! You know, the awards everyone’s been talking about. We got invited.”

“We’re not nominated, are we?”

“Does it matter Louis? It’s still a great opportunity to meet people, make connections. And it’ll be all over the papers that we attended, afterwards. It’s good for the new record. Paul will want us to go.”

Louis bites his tongue and doesn’t mention that he hasn’t talked to Paul in months.

*

He doesn’t think about it—not during the weeks prior to the trip, locked away at the studio trying to cram months of recording into the few days they have left of contract; not on the car ride to the airport, with Niall chattering animatedly by his side, nor on the flight from Nashville to Los Angeles. He doesn’t let himself ponder it while they check in at the hotel and Niall drags him to the pool for an entire afternoon, even when he goes without his dose for long enough that the edges of his vision stop blurring and the gnawing in his chest comes back.

He doesn’t think about it at all, and he doesn’t ask, so it’s not until they’re in the car on their way to the Beverly Hilton that Paul mentions it in passing.

Harry’s presenting an award, with Anne and Gemma by his side. They’ll be in the same city, same room, for the first time in five months, and not even a year’s worth of pills would be enough to prepare Louis for it. He wishes he had asked, had known in advance, and maybe he could have managed to make up a good enough excuse not to attend. He could have figured something out, if he’d had enough time. Maybe he could have gotten better, gotten his shit together, if only he had _known_.

Niall doesn’t mention it, but he squeezes Louis’ shoulder and smiles sympathetically at him, and Louis has to wonder if Niall has ever made the connection between Harry leaving the tour and Louis falling apart.

In retrospect, Louis thinks he should have known an awards ceremony would be excruciating: he’s forced to sit in a room surrounded by opportunists and social climbers, vicious and bloodthirsty, and watch all of them congratulate each other on their successes as if it weren’t all orchestrated, anyway. There’s an open bar, at least, and Louis already popped two pills before they left the hotel, so he spends the first hour drinking silently and ignoring Niall’s disapproving glances, ignoring what’s taking place on the stage. He claps when everyone else claps, and stands up after a seemingly impressive performance, when everyone around him rises to their feet in ovation.

He’s not expecting it when he goes back to the bar on a bathroom break and turns around the corner to find Harry standing there, perched against the wall and staring straight at him.

His hair is longer, reaching his earlobes, and styled in a way that gives him a prince-out-of-a-fairy-tale look. He looks sharp in a two piece blue suit, and Louis’ mouth goes dry as he follows the tight lines of his trousers and the way his coat is cinched at the at the waist, making Harry’s shoulders seem even broader.

“Hi,” Harry says, offering a shy smile, and he’s so painfully beautiful that it makes Louis wants to scream.

“Hey,” he says, forcing himself to smile back.

“How you doing, Louis?” Harry asks, and takes a step towards him.

Louis considers, for a split second, making a run for it. It’d be a cowardly move, he knows, but he doesn’t know what will come of this interaction with Harry, if it might be worse. He was prepared to see Harry on stage, or maybe far away in the crowd, but he didn’t anticipate seeing him this close, talking to him; he’s close enough that Louis can smell the same cologne that Louis loved to smell on him all those months ago as he pushed him onto the bed and fucked him raw.

“I’ve had worse days,” he replies—not entirely a lie—hoping Harry doesn’t pick up on  the way his voice trembles. “How are you?”

“It’s been good,” Harry says, eyes on the floor. “Finished tracking the new record a few weeks ago.”

“We just did ours, too,” Louis says, pointing with a lazy hand back to the audience, where Niall must be wondering where he went.

“I’d love to hear it sometime,” Harry says.

Louis nods stiffly, imagining Harry’s reaction when he hears the album and realizes every song is about him. “I could post it to you when—“

“Did you bring Danielle tonight?” Harry asks, interrupting him, and his eyes widen, like he didn’t mean for those words to come out.

They stare at each other for a long moment; Louis searches Harry’s face, trying to figure out why he’s asking, but he’s shaken off his initial surprise, expression carefully constructed not to give anything away.

“Came with someone else,” Louis says dismissively. “Danielle and I are getting the divorce papers finalized.”

“I thought you weren’t actually married,” Harry says, the wrinkle between his eyebrows betraying the spite in his voice.

“We weren’t,” Louis is quick to reply, filled with the anxious need to reassure him, “but we still have to split our belongings and such. Can’t leave her on the street.”

Harry nods and looks away, and Louis wants nothing more than to close the short distance between them and take him into his arms.

“Are you here with anyone?” he asks before he can think about it, his tongue already looser than he’d wish, and Harry grimaces, looking away from him.

“Her name is Jean. She’s just starting out—it’s good. It’s good publicity, you know? To be seen with her at places like this.”

It doesn’t sound like it’s good, if Harry’s tone is anything to go by, but Louis doesn’t say anything. It’s not like he was any better for him, anyway.

“I thought you weren’t doing that anymore,” Louis says, casually but keeping a close eye on Harry’s reaction. “No more fake relationships. Thought you fancied yourself free.”

He hates the way his voice sounds, but he doesn’t know how to stop the words from coming out. His hands have started shaking, shoved in the pockets of his trousers, and he can tell he’s about to start slurring. He’d walk away, if he didn’t think his legs would betray him.

“I’m doing what I can to survive, Louis,” Harry says, voice barely a whisper, and something inside Louis breaks at that, because it’s his fault; he’s led Harry to this.

Unbelievably, he manages to speak again and not mess it up. “I’m sorry, if I made it harder. I didn’t—I don’t think I understood what it really meant, back then.”

“Louis—you don’t have to do this right now,” Harry says, looking over his shoulder.

Louis ignores him, and continues. “I didn’t know. About Danielle—what she’d do. I’m sorry. I never meant for things to turn out the way they did.”

Harry smiles at that, and Louis finds himself stumbling forward, tripping over his own feet as he tries to come closer to Harry. An arm wraps around his waist to hoist him up and Harry’s curls brush against his cheek, his smell making Louis dizzy. He tries to put his arm around Harry, wonders if he would allow him a hug, if not a kiss—how he would kill to press his lips to Harry’s skin one more time.

“Are you drunk?” Harry asks, and shoves Louis almost harshly towards a more secluded spot by the bathrooms. Louis hears the faint sound of clapping and feet shuffling, and assumes the first break is about to start.

“I’m sorry,” he says, stumbling again, and Harry’s hands tighten around him.

“God, Louis—you can’t just—this is an important event, you can’t be doing these things here.”

“I didn’t know—didn’t tell me you’d be here. I wasn’t—couldn’t—” He takes a big breath, then lets his eyes meet Harry’s at last. “I love—fuck. I miss you so much. I can’t—I can’t even think without you here.”

Harry’s eyes soften, if only for a moment, and then he shakes his head, his lips pursed. “That’s evident.”

“I’m sorry,” Louis says again, and it comes out faint; he hadn’t noticed, before, the tightening in his chest, but he’s finding it hard to breathe, now.

Harry stays with him, rubbing circles on his back until his breathing is stable again and he can sit up without support. He remains silent, but doesn’t tell Louis to stop when he starts whispering again, unable to stop himself from telling him he loves him over and over again. Harry’s hand stills on his back, the only tell that he’s heard him, just for a moment, before he resumes his touch, like he’s pretending it doesn’t matter.

It could be minutes or hours that they sit in the bathroom floor, but eventually Harry removes his hand and shuffles to his feet.

“Harry—”

“I have to present an award in ten minutes,” Harry says, no apology in his tone.

“Thank you,” he whispers, hoping that Harry will hear him. “I’m sorry I’m—

“I know,” is all Harry says, and Louis doesn’t look up, just counts the steps as Harry walks away and blinks away the burning in his eyes when he hears the door slam shut.

*

He gets it in the mail a week later; not as ornate as the Grammy invitation, but in slick white paper and bold red lettering, an invitation to Harry Styles’ record release party stares right at him. He’s just made it back to Nashville, and he has a meeting with the lawyers in the upcoming week, so he knows he should RSVP _no_ and move on, especially after Harry walking away at the Grammys, but he’s never made smart decisions when it comes to Harry.

Niall shakes his head when he tells him, but he doesn’t try to persuade him not to go, and less than three days later Louis is on a plane to New York City.

He’s never liked New York before—too loud and crowded and unreal—but the knowledge that this is Harry’s home, that he could run into him any time he turns a corner, gives walking through the streets a new thrill.

Louis gets there on a Wednesday; the event isn’t until that Saturday, so he spends the days leading up to it walking around Soho, trying to picture Harry’s life growing up here, all those years ago.

He attends a party a friend of Jerry Lee invites him too. It’s full of naked girls and heavier drugs than Louis is used to, and he spends the following day sick in the bathroom, barely able to lift up his head from the toilet bowl without spilling his insides all over the floor.

It takes him a few days to gather up the courage to head to the East Side, where he remembers Harry told him he used to go to cruise, back when he was trying to find himself. He walks up and down Third Avenue, looking for the hidden spots he knows men frequent when they’re looking for something different, but he always stops himself before knocking on the door.

He sees leather-clad boys going into dark alleys with men in crisp suits, and he pictures Harry doing this: getting on his knees for older men, parading himself around in tiny clothing in dim lit rooms trying to catch someone’s attention to try and make some sense of himself. He pictures Harry, surrounded by other men, feeling wild and free at last, and then subsequently hiding in a secret basement.

The first scream startles him out of his thoughts, and he looks around, disoriented, trying to find the source. Then there’s another, and another, a crowd joining together and screaming in desperation, and Louis runs toward it, not knowing what to expect, but the image he stumbles into stops him dead in his tracks.

There’s a young man, barely out of his teens, crouched on the ground, struggling to crawl away, and three older—and much bigger—men standing over him and kicking him relentlessly. Three boys are stopped a few feet from them, screaming at the men to stop, but fear stops them from moving forward.

Louis takes a step closer, unnoticed by anyone, but he freezes as he spots the puddle of blood growing around the boy.

“Get away from here, you freaks,” one of the men says as he pulls back from the boy on the ground, his fist stained dark with blood, “or you’re next.”

The screaming doesn’t stop until suddenly, almost in slow motion, the boy stops struggling, stops moving at all, and just goes limp. The screams this time are piercing, stomach-turning, and they make Louis’ chest constrict painfully.

He wants to join in, shout until his voice gives out, and he can feel tears pricking at his eyes, but he doesn’t move until the men step away from the body and begin walking away from it, from him, directly towards Louis.

He runs into the alleyway and retches into a garbage can, tears flowing freely now. It takes him a while to calm down after, to get his breathing under control. When he emerges, the three boys are sat on the floor, clutching the lifeless body and sobbing loudly.

Louis wants to walk over, comfort them, but instead, he turns away from them and runs, not stopping until he reaches his hotel.

*

The party is at Harry’s apartment, a fancy penthouse in the Upper West Side. There’s paparazzi outside and security at the door, and Louis is thankful he decided against bringing his pills, because they search him thoroughly, twice, before letting him in. Absently, Louis wonders if that’s the procedure for everyone, or if Harry singled him out.

He sees Anne and Gemma surrounded by a crowd, laughing loudly, but he decides against going over to the, heads over to the bar instead. He wishes Niall were here, or even Jerry Lee (he knows Harry would never invite Liam). Elvis might be here, for all Louis knows, but he doesn’t feel up for that kind of interaction; things are still weird from the end of tour.

Harry finds him while he’s nursing his second beer; a soft _hey_ whispered in his ear makes him jump and almost spill his drink all over himself. Louis barely has time to process what just happened before he finds himself face to face with Harry, beautiful as ever, standing in front of him. “Hey.”

“Congratulations,” Louis says, and wraps an arm around Harry before he can object. “You must be really proud of this one.”

A hand slides under his dress jacket, settles on the small of his back and pulls him closer, and then Louis’ head is pressed into the crook of Harry’s neck, nose brushing against his pulse point. It’s so brief Louis would think it was an accident, Harry confusing him for someone else, but the hand on his back lingers after they pull back from the hug, Harry’s thumb rubbing circles against him, and the way Harry smiles at him tells him it’s deliberate.

“Glad you could make it,” Harry says when they break apart. “Having a good time?”

“Yeah—been trying to make my way to your mum, but I haven’t been able to catch her,” he says, even though it isn’t true—he hasn’t left the bar area in at least an hour.

“Tons of people,” Harry says, and rolls his eyes. “Didn’t expect this turnout, but the label said it’d be good for the sales, get a bunch of A-listers to talk about the record.”

Louis nods, and then says, “Is Ben here?” He doesn’t really mean to ask, but the words come out anyway, because he’s a masochist, and Harry visibly flinches at the question.

“He’s…somewhere out the back. Keeping people entertained,” he says, gesturing with his hands. “He organized this whole thing, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” Louis replies icily. “Heard he was producing your album. Is he your manager again, too?” The real question is there; Louis watches Harry’s face carefully, waiting to see the answer he knows Harry won’t give him.

“No—that’s. I’ve a new one, Olive. She’s fierce, I think you’ll like her.”

Louis heart stutters at the implication in Harry’s words, but Harry continues before he has a chance to add anything. “I shouldn’t have gone back to working with Ben. It wasn’t my wisest moment, you know? I knew even as I showed him my new songs that it was—that I didn’t want him around them.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Well it’s a damn good record, isn’t it?” Harry laughs, and Louis notices he’s blushing. “I don’t—it’s fine. I like what’s come of it. I’m standing here right now thanks to that, but I did it for the wrong reasons, yeah? And that wasn’t good for me.”

 _Or me_ , Louis wants to add, but he doesn’t think he’s got the right to, anymore.

Harry leads him around the apartment with ease, introducing him to people, a soft hand always finding its way to the small of his back, directing him wherever Harry wants him. It’s weird, Harry taking control like this, when so much of their relationship in the past was about Louis, what he wanted and when he wanted it, but he finds that he doesn’t mind it at all. He’ll take anything Harry can give him, even if it’s just parading him around parties.

He wants nothing more than to take Harry somewhere secluded and kiss him breathless. He’d kiss him here, in front of everyone, if he didn’t know for a fact that Harry would never forgive him for it. It would burn his career, and both of their lives, to the ground, and Louis doesn’t think he’s ever ranked as high as music in Harry’s life. He’d gladly give it all up, if it meant he got to have Harry, but he has begrudgingly accepted by now that a future with Harry is nothing more than just a fantasy.

“Allen, this is my friend Louis,” Harry says when they reach a man quietly sipping whiskey on the balcony. Harry’s hand drops from Louis’ back as soon as they get close enough.

He’s heard of Allen, of course, because it’s impossible to be in the circles Louis moves in nowadays and not hear about Jack Kerouac and his crazy poet friends. Louis’ met Kerouac before, at some party somewhere after the release of his book, the one everyone keeps raving about and Louis can’t make himself finish, but he didn’t really make an impression. He remembers snorting coke off his stomach, and Jack tonguing a stripe up his neck after doing the same, licking all the white off him, but whatever happened after is a blur. He doesn’t think they even got off together, but he can’t remember; it’s what he does these days, ever since Harry.

He wonders if Allen knows who he is, if Harry has told him about him.

They shake hands, and Allen considers him for a long moment before turning to Harry again, placing a soft hand on Harry’s elbow as they converse; they’re talking about some author, Louis figures, even though no names are mentioned. Louis has never fancied himself an intellectual, and he knows he’s probably not up to Allen’s Ivy League standards, but it rubs him the wrong way that neither of them make any attempt to include Louis in the conversation.

He sips his drinks silently instead, observing their body language. They’re standing quite close together, in contrast to Louis, who’s far enough that he could slip away unnoticed, and Allen’s hips are cocked to the left invitingly, in a way that Louis has only seen men do in dark alleys outside secret clubs. Harry’s arms are casually crossed over his chest, not too engaging, but he’s yet to shake off Allen’s arm where it’s still resting by his elbow.

The idea snakes into his thoughts suddenly, and then he can’t not see it: it’s in the way Allen’s eyes stray to Harry’s lips; in the comfortable grip he has on Harry’s arm; in his flirty stance and the knowing look he gave Louis when he approached. It’s even obvious in the way Harry stands, casual but too close for simple acquaintances, and in the slight flush of his face every time Allen smiles at him.

Louis knows fans, knows acquaintances and colleagues and friends, and this isn’t any of those. Louis knows lovers, and what it’s like to look at Harry Styles when you know what he looks like naked.   

He wants to be angry, wants his earlier annoyance to be back, but instead there’s just emptiness, the cold confirmation that Harry has moved on.

“What is yours, Louis?” Allen addresses him unexpectedly, interrupting Louis’ inner crisis. Louis stands, mortified that he has no idea what they’re talking about.

Harry seems to notice, because he steps in and saves him. “Allen was talking about his biggest aspiration, his greatest dream.”

“True freedom,” Allen says. “No war, no religion, no governments. Freedom to live and love as we please, with no one to listen to.”

For an academic, Louis thinks his answer is quite basic. “Anarchy?” he suggests, trying his best not to roll his eyes. “Nihilism?”

“Not quite,” Allen says, looking over at Harry knowingly, and something about it makes Louis’ stomach clench uncomfortably. “It is, of course, unachievable, at least for our current society, but one can dream.”

Louis nods, pretending to consider Allen’s words, when all he can really think about is how Harry’s still standing too close, and Louis loves him, loves him enough to endure this conversation and the pain of meeting Harry’s new lover, and why did Harry invite him, why did he bring him here and introduce him to Allen and make him witness this intellectual mating ritual when he must know that he’s dying on the inside?

“What about you, Tomlinson?” Allen asks, turning away from Harry. “What’s _your_ biggest aspiration?”

“I don’t think I’ve spent as much time as you have considering it,” Louis says easily, just as his eyes betray him and set on Harry, who’s gazing back at him with an intensity that makes Louis almost want to look away. “I don’t know if there’s one thing I want more than anything else.”

 _Harry_ , his brain supplies, as easy as breathing. _A life alongside to Harry, in a house in the woods._

“Surely there must be something,” Allen insists. “Maybe something you’d like to take back, or change?”

 _The end of tour. The day Lucas died. Germany. Danielle._ “Doesn’t do any good to dwell on past mistakes, does it?”

Harry frowns, ever so slightly, but Louis doesn’t let himself dwell on it. He isn’t nearly drunk enough to give himself any false hope.

“What do you think, Harold?” he says, and winks. “Any great aspirations? Impossible dreams to match our pal Allen’s here?” He hopes Harry will understand that he doesn’t mean anything he said.

“I think Allen really made a case there about war,” Harry says, and winks back at Louis when Allen smiles smugly and closes his eyes.

Allen starts again after that, going off about war and profit with such certainty that it makes Louis wonder if he’s had this conversation before, rehearsed it in front of the mirror time and time again to make sure he doesn’t stumble over the words. He’s a poet, Louis reminds himself; everything about him is a performance, a lie. It would bug Louis more if it wasn’t also true about himself.

It doesn’t really matter what Allen’s talking about, because Harry’s still looking at Louis, has barely even blinked since the conversation redirected to him. Louis lifts up both eyebrows at him and smiles, and Harry reacts by rolling his eyes in Allen’s direction, a complicit grin pulling at his lips. Louis contorts his face into a stern frown, trying to imitate Ginsberg’s condescending one, and Harry has to lift a hand to his mouth to stifle his giggle.  

Allen may be sleeping with Harry, but at least Louis still gets this.

Speaking of Allen, he’s rambling on about war, and hidden agendas, on and on about Vietnam in such a passionate way that it makes Louis want to roll his eyes. He’s certain all Allen knows about war comes from the radio, from listening to his rich ivy league friends who fancy themselves liberals but still benefit from letting people like Louis rot in poverty, and it makes Louis’ stomach churn.

“I’d thought you, of all people, would agree with me,” Allen says when Louis can’t hold back a scoff. “What with your personal experience and all.”

Louis wonders if Allen’s kept up with his story, if he knows of Louis’ role back in Germany, if he’s read the fake reports about Stalin or if he’s talking about something much more personal; anger bubbles inside him as he looks over at Harry and finds him looking down guiltily, avoiding his eyes—all the confirmation that he needs.

“You keep talking about an agenda,” Louis says, trying to hide his irritation, “but war isn’t wrong because the people funding it have an agenda. It’s wrong because it’s wrong. Because no one should die for a country that doesn’t give a damn about them.” _Because no one should die for anyone but themselves._

Allen hums, contemplative, then nods. “Wouldn’t have pegged you as someone with such morals,” he adds, “with all your songs about criminals and women.”

Louis somehow manages not to rise to the bait—Allen is a poet, he knows none of the things they write are meant to be literal, anyway, and if he’s seeing Harry and he’s friends with Kerouac, he must know by now that Louis’ interest in women keeps thinning out with time. Instead of responding—and Lord, does he want to respond—Louis bows his head, turns on his heel, and heads for the bar, not bothering to look back to see if Harry has followed.

*

Harry finds him at the bar two and a half drinks later, and Louis is equal parts grateful and resentful at Oliver, who hadn’t shown up with his stash earlier that day. Harry’s got a smile plastered on his face—the result of spending the night in a room where everyone’s praising you, Louis thinks—but it changes when he reaches Louis; it softens, somehow.

The alcohol has helped dissipate Louis’ anger, but it’s still there, simmering quietly, and Louis finds that, as much as he hates Allen, it’s Harry that he’s angry at: for sharing his past; for not respecting his privacy; but mostly for confiding in anyone other than him—for not loving him the way Louis loves him, relentlessly and all consuming.

He wants to ask how much of their history he’s shared with Allen, or with all his other lovers—if he’s spread his secrets all around New York, telling people about poor, pathetic Louis Tomlinson, who didn’t even go to war but still has nightmares about the battles, who killed his own brother and still fancies himself the victim. He wants to fight, push and pull until he’s driven Harry away again, because he doesn’t know how else to handle him.

He doesn’t, though, because Harry is still smiling at him, and as much as it hurts to know he’s lost his place in Harry’s life, at least he gets _this_ , and it’s better than nothing. “So, you and Allen,” he says instead, because as much as he tries to hold back these days, he’s still as self-destructive as they come. It’s the pills that make him quiet, for the most part.

“Don’t even start,” Harry says, voice sounding more annoyed than his face lets on, and takes a seat next to Louis at the bar, stealing a sip from Louis’ drink and making a face before putting it down.

“Hey, I’m trying to be supportive here,” Louis insists, smirking. “Isn’t that what friends do?”

Harry snorts at that. “We’re not friends, Louis.”

There’s no bite to the words, no bitterness, and it takes Louis a second to catch on. “What am I doing here, then? Thought it was a party for your closest friends.”

Leaning back in his seat, Harry smiles. “Look around you, Lou.”

When Louis takes his eyes off of Harry and surveys the room, he finds that there’s no one left.

“Where did everyone go?” Louis asks, frowning.

“Doesn’t matter,” Harry says, and kisses him.

They fall into each other like they haven’t spent months and months apart, and all those times Louis told himself he could live without this turn to ash as Harry’s hand snakes into his pants and closes around him with no preamble. Louis wonders, as he arches his back and pushes into the touch, if he ever stood a chance against the relentless force that is Harry Styles.

There’s a hand in his hair and lips on his throat, nails raking down his back and sliding behind his balls. There’s hickeys spread all over his chest, a matching set on Harry’s, soft lips on his and teeth biting hard enough to draw blood, and none of it is enough.

Harry pushes him against the wall and takes him into his mouth, lets him come all over his face before rubbing it all over Louis’ stomach, spreading the come there, and then licking it off. Louis grabs Harry by his hair and lifts him up, kisses him, bites him, scratches him, and then he’s on his knees, taking Harry as deep as he can, eyes watering from the stretch, and it’s still not enough.

They’re on a bed, suddenly, and Louis notes absentmindedly that it’s his first time in Harry’s bed, in Harry’s room, and his heart gets stuck in his throat in its relentless attempts to jump out of his chest.

“You,” Louis says, unable to get more words out, but he thinks that Harry gets it, if the way his eyes widen and his heart goes wild under Louis’ hand are anything to go by.

_I want you. I need you. I love you._

He’s pushed down on the bed, his back hitting the mattress, and he’s about to get up again, pull Harry down with him, when he hears the sound of the Vaseline jar opening. He freezes for a split second, an alarm going off in his head urging him to get up, but instead he brings his legs up and digs both heels into the mattress, exposing himself.

Harry’s face when he turns around and finds him positioned and ready for him is enough to push any doubts he may be harboring out the door. This is Harry, _his_ Harry, and Harry wants him like this, so Louis is going to give it to him.

“Spread your legs,” Harry commands, a little breathless, and Louis obliges, idly thinking that he’s always going to oblige, if Harry’s the one asking. The realization comes just as Harry’s cold finger presses right behind his balls, sliding up, and Louis’ shudder is swallowed by Harry’s lips on his, the hand not currently circling around his hole sliding down his arm to tangle their fingers together.

The first digit feels like an intrusion when it pushes in, but it doesn’t hurt the way Louis expected it to, the way everyone around him seems to associate to _this_ ; it’s odd, and not the most comfortable, but Harry allows him a moment to familiarize himself with the feeling, peppering kisses all over his neck and jaw, and Louis is so overwhelmed that he barely notices the burn as it moves in and out of him.

“Focus on me,” Harry says, his other hand fiddling with his balls as he fucks Louis impossibly slow, and Louis wants to reassure him, let him now that he doesn’t have to worry, that it doesn’t hurt, but words die in his throat every time Harry’s finger buries itself deep inside him.

“Always,” he manages breathlessly, and Harry groans and kisses him.

Louis gets lost in the feel of Harry’s mouth on his, in the simmering pleasure building in his stomach, but he still yelps when the finger is gone and he clenches around air. Harry’s hand hooks around his knee, pulling it up to allow better access, and he feels a rush of cold air before Harry’s thumb brushes over him, making his hips buckle. Harry’s lips attack to his neck as he slides his finger in once again, pushing in and out twice before adding a second one.

“This,” Harry whispers against his skin, pushing in the second finger along witth the first. “When you asked earlier, what my impossible dream was. It was this. Always this.”

Louis keens, tilts his head back so he can get his lips on Harry, arching his back and burying Harry’s fingers deeper inside him. He thinks about telling Harry that he was his dream, has always been, but he’s too exposed as is, so he swallows down the words and just kisses back instead.

Three fingers are more of a stretch than Louis imagined, and he has to break away from Harry’s mouth. “I got you,” Harry whispers, licking around the shell of his ear. “I’m gonna make you feel good, Lou—so good. You’re going to feel the way I feel when you do this to me. I’ll make it as good as you make it for me.”

The pain isn’t bad enough to make him want to stop, not when Harry is speaking to him this way, pressing kisses all over his face and neck. He wouldn’t want to stop even if it was bad, he thinks, not with all the effort Harry’s putting into making it good, not when it means he gets to have Harry one more time.

Time stops when Harry pushes in, and Louis feels his eyes rolling back as pleasure ripples through his body. It’s different from the fingers, which slid and curled _just so_ inside him, but despite the stretch and the slight ache, he finds himself thrusting back, seeking more. He never understood what Harry meant when he said he liked the fullness of it, but he does now.  He can feel Harry everywhere, pulsing inside him, and it makes him delirious with how good it feels.

He opens his eyes to find Harry staring down at him, eyes glazed, his grin bordering on manic. He can’t see himself, but he imagines his own smile mimics Harry’s, what with how close he is to losing his mind over this. Louis had thought he’d felt close to Harry before, but he really had no idea.

“I knew it,” Harry says, each word followed by a gasp. “I knew you’d feel—fuck.”

Louis arches his back again, head slamming against the pillow, biting down on his lip to stop the moan that’s threatening to rip from his throat. Harry’s mouth latches onto his neck and Louis’ hips buck up, burying Harry deeper in him. Louis gasps following every snap of Harry’s hips—short and hard, in contrast to Harry’s tongue on his neck, languidly lapping in between bites and kisses.

“You’re fucking—” Harry moans, and Louis grabs his face and kisses him. “Fucking brilliant.”

Both of Harry’s hands slide down from where they’re drumming against Louis’ ribs and take firm hold of his hips, before he rolls back on his heels and sits up, pulling Louis with him without slipping out, until Louis is bottomed out, sat flush on Harry’s lap and feeling so full he thinks he might implode any second. He closes his eyes and buries his head in Harry’s neck, kissing the spot where it dips into his collarbone and trembling as he feels Harry shift inside him before he begins moving again, thrusting deeper every time.

“I didn’t—” he murmurs against Harry’s skin. “I didn’t _know_ .” _That it would be this good. That you would feel this way_.

Their eyes meet and Harry nods, like he knows, he _understands_. “I can’t believe I get to feel you like this,” Harry whispers against his lips, and kisses him.

He doesn’t last long after that, coming between them as soon as Harry lays a hand on him, his orgasm stretching endlessly; he thinks he blacks out, at one point, eyes rolling back in his head and mouth going slack, and when he finally opens his eyes, it’s to watch as Harry tips over the edge, freezing as he spills inside Louis. He keeps thrusting shallowly, chasing his orgasm, until he collapses on top of Louis, spreading the cooling come there over both of their stomachs.

“That might have just been the greatest thing I’ve ever done,” Harry says, still smiling,  and he presses a kiss to the middle of Louis’ chest.  

“Feel free to do it again anytime,” Louis says mindlessly, still somewhat dazed, and can’t even find it in himself to be embarrassed when Harry barks a laugh at him. He can feel Harry leaking out of him, sticky and still warm between his thighs, and it feels weirdly grounding: a physical reminder of what just happened.

“Okay?” Harry asks, eyes clouded with worry, and Louis brings him up by the shoulders and closes the distance between their lips. Harry kisses him back like he’s starving for it, like they haven’t spent the better part of the night doing it already, and suddenly he finds himself hard again, rutting against Harry’s leg as their mouths move together relentlessly.

He expects Harry to settle back on the bed when they break apart, but Harry’s hands find his waist and ease him onto his stomach before he moves behind and settles between his legs. Louis cranes his neck to try to figure out what Harry’s planning, but a firm hand on the back of his neck presses his head back against the mattress before a warm tongue licks a stripe up his thigh, where Harry’s own come is beginning to cool.

Louis gasps in surprise and opens his mouth to complain, or encourage—to somehow acknowledge that Harry’s out of his fucking mind and also the greatest—but then Harry’s tongue is licking higher and higher until it finds Louis’ too-sensitive hole. He keens, hips shying away from Harry’s mouth before pushing back against it, pleasure building rapidly in his belly once again, and he moans Harry’s name before biting into his palm and coming one more time. It’s almost dry this time, compared to the mess he made against Harry’s chest minutes before, but somehow that makes it more intense, and he finds himself shaking with the waves of pleasure, Harry’s mouth still on him, licking him clean.

“You,” Louis says as he rolls onto his back, tears prickling at the corner of his eyes, “are absolutely mental.”

Harry grins sheepishly and kisses the corner of his mouth. “Good mental?”

Louis doesn’t answer, instead reaching for Harry’s hand and bringing it to his mouth, carefully kissing his knuckles. “I missed this.”

Harry’s smile falters, if only for a second, and Louis feels his chest constrict at the sight. “I thought,” Harry begins before Louis can reassure him, finger hooking into Louis’ chain and pulling softly “that I would get over you, you know? I figured it would go away, with time. Wasn’t expecting to still want you when I saw you that night in Los Angeles. Drugged out of your mind, stumbling around like a drunk and yet—”

The mention makes Louis hyper-aware of how long it’s been since he’s had a drink, or a fix; his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, throat tight and overwhelmingly dry, and he has to fist both hands and close his eyes for a moment to shake the thoughts off.  “I didn’t even try,” he says, because it’s the truth. “I’ve always known that there was no getting over this. Over you.”

Harry’s eyes meet his, wide and vulnerable, and it could be exhaustion from the sex or the abstinence, but maybe it’s just being in Harry’s proximity that’s making Louis feel like he’s been cut open.

“I am sorry, you know.”

“Louis—“

“I know, yeah, okay. But I am,” Louis says, and sighs.

“Okay,” Harry says, and just like that, the conversation’s over.

Louis starts preparing himself for the dismissal, for the moment when the glass breaks and the fantasy’s over and Harry tells him it’s time to go. He had no expectations when he came to the party, and he still doesn’t now. He’s already gotten more than he could ever hope for.

He lies on the bed and waits, and waits, and doesn’t move an inch even when Harry rolls over so he has his back to Louis. He assumes that this is it—a silent dismissal—but then Harry reaches for Louis’ arm and drapes it around his own torso, linking their hands over his chest.

It isn’t a promise, or a resolution, and part of Louis knows that letting himself indulge in this is only going to make it hurt more when Harry pushes him away again, but Harry’s warm and soft in his arms, Louis’ favourite scent, and he knows that even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to make himself pull away now.

*

He wakes up to the sound of a horn blasting and Harry staring sweetly down at him.

“Is New York always this loud?” Louis asks, closing his eyes once again, and he feels the vibrations of Harry’s laugh.

“Yes,” Harry says, smile so obvious in his voice that Louis can picture it, even with his eyes closed. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Louis replies, smiling back.

A hand cups his cheek, and he turns into it, lips brushing against the palm. When he opens his eyes, he finds Harry’s smile is gone, but that he’s staring at him so intensely that it’s almost blinding. Louis resists the urge to close his eyes again, and instead, in a surge of bravery, closes the distance between them to press his mouth to Harry’s. Harry sighs against his lips, then uses the hand still on Louis’ face to urge him closer, deepening the kiss.

“Good morning,” Harry says again when they break apart, letting out a breathless laugh.

“Yeah,” Louis agrees easily. “It is.”

Harry makes him breakfast: full English, which Louis hasn’t had since he was a kid, and he has to force himself to swallow down the scratchy feeling in his throat and all the words pushing to get out when Harry presents it proudly to him, complete with Louis’ favourite type of tea, almost as good as his mum used to make it.

They eat together in Harry’s extravagant kitchen, and then Harry bends Louis over the breakfast bar and drops to his knees to eat him out for what feels like hours, until Louis is so achingly hard and desperate to come that there’s tears in his eyes, and it only takes two tugs of Harry’s wrist before he comes all over the marble counter.

Later, they shower together, and Louis fingers Harry with the aid of the soapy water, and then they collapse on Harry’s bed together as soon as they get out, trading messy blowjobs that leave them sticky and in need of another shower.

Louis tells Harry about his new house, the one in Nashville, and how he hasn’t spent more than two nights there since he bought it, but what a relief it is to know he doesn’t have to go home to Danielle ever again. They talk about tour, past and future, and Louis plays Harry a new song he’s working on, wearing nothing but one of Harry’s shirts, and then they spend the afternoon making out until they’re both hard and breathless and their stomachs are growling in complaint.

Louis doesn’t go back to his hotel for the rest of his stay in New York, and Harry manages to ignore all his appointments, even going as far as to unplug the phone in his bathroom that was ringing while Louis was trying to fuck him one afternoon. They spend the next three days holed up Harry’s apartment; they don’t bother putting on clothes, except for the one time Harry has to go down to the lobby to pick up a package, and they eat from the pan in the kitchen and listen to the radio and read Beetle Bailey while huddled together on the sofa. It’s more domestic than anything Louis ever had with Danielle, and he aches with how much he wants to stretch these moments forever.

It isn’t until he’s about to leave that he lets himself bring up something he’s been thinking about for days, ever since he told Harry about his upcoming tour and Harry said he had no plans for the rest of the year.

“How do you feel—” he starts, then makes himself stop; Harry’s looking at him with a slight crease between his eyebrows, and Louis wants to reach over and smooth it out. They’re still a little breathless after a long makeout session that concluded with mutual hand-jobs, lying in Harry’s bed, and Louis has three hours before he has to be at the airport.

“About what?” Harry asks, voice serious.

“About coming on tour with us again,” Louis rushes out, and looks away, awaiting the rejection.

“What?” It isn’t a no. Not yet, at least, and Louis can work with that.

“Your new record just came out; you said you don’t have anything set up yet. Come on tour with me.” _Be with me_ , he wants to say, but swallows it down. C _ome on tour and take me back and let me have everything we used to that I ruined like I do with everything_.

“Who else is coming?” Harry asks, still not a no, and hope spreads in Louis’ chest.

“Carl, Elvis, Niall of course, and Liam.” Harry makes a face at the name, and Louis winces as he remembers, but wills himself to continue. “We’re still waiting on Elvis for a few dates, but he said he’ll probably sit this one out.”

“Well, good.”

“What? He’s Elvis!”

Harry looks completely unfazed by this. “He’s an addict. And a punk.”

Louis shakes his head, staring at Harry in disbelief. “He’s a genius.”

“If he was a genius he wouldn’t be doing all those drugs,” Harry says, shrugging, “or giving them to others.”

Louis ignores the jab and smiles hopefully at Harry. “So will you come?”

“I’ll think about it,” Harry says, smiling back, and Louis feels like he could swallow the world whole.


	7. 1960

 

The thing about first night of tour is that it’s always a disaster, no matter what. Everybody always expects too much, they all tire too fast from being off the road for too long, and it seems like everyone is two minutes away from snapping.

It’s Louis’ third time around the country and for the first time, he doesn’t care, because Harry’s here. It feels like they’re back to before, picking things up right after Boston, when Louis felt like he was walking on a cloud every second of the day.

Their first show is okay –Liam calls it mediocre, but Louis has long stopped caring about Liam’s opinion—but Louis is buzzing when he steps off stage, unable to shake the smile off his face. He gets drunk with Niall and Harry and they end up breaking into the hotel cafeteria looking for food, and later, when he goes to sleep, arms tight around Harry’s torso, he thinks it might have been his favourite show yet.

Carl steers clear of both of them, keeping it strictly professional, but Liam seems to have forgotten or moved past his previous reservations about Harry, so their ritual of drinks after the show is reinstalled (now in Harry’s hotel room).

They still keep to themselves as much as they can, and they both bring girls around every once in awhile, to keep up appearances. Louis still has dreams about that day in New York City, and he knows Harry’s biggest fear is being found; it comes close a few times.

Niall walks in on them showering together and Louis has to stay on his knees with Harry’s cock in his mouth while Niall takes the longest wee of his life, chattering to Harry about nothing in particular. It doesn’t help that Harry seems to get off on it, thrusting his hips ever so slightly while Louis tries as hard as he can not to bite his dick off.

Josh, one of the roadies, catches them making out in their dressing room one night, but luckily he’s drunk enough that he mistakes Harry for a girl, long hair and on his knees for Louis, and he walks out giggling and apologizing, promising to knock the next time.

Cheryl, the new tour manager, gives everyone a stern talk about their private habits and bad publicity; she mentions drugs and girls in passing but Louis still feels like she’s talking directly to him. Harry laughs and tells him he’s being paranoid, then brings up this book that Allen gave him for his birthday and tells him Big Brother is always watching, but behind his amusement Louis can see that he’s terrified, too.

*

Louis is still taking his pills—and anything else he can get his hands on in each city—but he learns to be stealthy about it. He doesn’t take anything in front of Harry, no matter how badly he itches for it, and he watches his dose whenever he’s going to be with him.

It doesn’t mean Harry doesn’t notice when Louis starts slurring during rehearsal, or on the bus on the way to the next city, but he simply shakes his head, a resigned look on his face, and starts talking about something random or singing bits of a new song he’s working on, and Louis is grateful.

For the first two months, things are good. There’s music, and drinks, and Harry. There are sleepless nights doing nothing but talking; and sleepless nights where talking is the last thing they do; lazy mornings and showers together and goodnight kisses, and Louis lets himself think that maybe, this time, he’ll get to keep this.

When Jerry Lee joins them for the summer, things start to go downhill. Louis doesn’t mean for it to happen, but he finds himself drawing away from Harry as he pumps his body full of more drugs every day. He doesn’t want to ignore Harry, but he knows that the moment Harry realizes what he’s doing the bubble will burst, and things will end, and Louis can’t fathom not having Harry with him anymore, so he withdraws; he spends more time locked up with Jerry doing lines and drinking and smoking with Dan and Josh than he does with Harry, or even Niall, and slowly the hours he spends sober begin thinning out, until the days start blurring together and his life becomes a mess of numbness and not enough Harry.

“I missed you,” Louis whispers to the back of his neck, just as he pulls out, one odd night when he makes it to Harry’s room instead of Jerry’s.

“Me, or the sex?” Harry asks with feigned amusement, but Louis can hear the hurt in his voice. He wants to scream, because the one thing he doesn’t want to do in this world is hurt Harry.

“You,” he says, hoping Harry doesn’t notice the way the word drags. “Always, always you.”

Harry huffs but doesn’t push him away when Louis wraps his arms around his torso and starts kissing his shoulders. “I love you, baby, I love you,” he says, words jumbled and slurred. “Baby, you, just you. Always you.”

*

They have a day off in San Francisco, and Louis plans them a day together. He books a hotel room under an alias, one with a bigger bed and a large tub and a view, and gets them studio time at Wally Heider for the afternoon so that Harry can record the new song he’s been singing to Louis for weeks.

“I can’t,” Harry says when Louis tells him. “There’s this thing—a poetry thing. Allen asked me to come.”

Louis stares at him in disbelief. “Don’t you think your music is more important than Allen?”

“It’s not about him, Louis, it’s a—protest, of sorts.”

“What are you protesting now?” Louis asks, bitter and full of disdain.

Harry shakes his head at him, laughing under his breath. “Just because you’re happy to live your life in hiding doesn’t mean the rest of us are—“

“How is a poetry reading going to change anything about that?”

The look on Harry’s face is somewhere between hurt and disbelief, and Louis wonders where he went wrong. “How does music change anything, Louis?” Harry spits. “I thought you—of all people. When Allen said—“

Rage roars inside Louis. “Talk about me with Allen again, H? What did he say now? That I’m not good enough for you? Not smart enough? Deep enough?”

“If you knew me at all, you would know that none of that would matter to me, even if he had said that,” Harry throws at him, and it takes Louis a moment to realize that they’re screaming at each other. “If I cared about what people say about you I would have walked away a long time ago.”

 _Why didn’t you_ ? Louis wants to ask. _Why don’t you leave me now_?

“I thought you’d care about this, after what you saw, I thought you’d understand why it’s important that we stick together, that we fight back. Allen thinks—”

“Just because a pretty boy with a way with words spews passionately about freedom and equality doesn’t mean you should blindly follow everything he says.”

“Funny how all you care about is that he’s pretty,” Harry snaps at him. “It’s not like that, anyway. Allen and I—we’re mates, we hang.”

“Sure, like you and Ben used to hang out, huh?”

“Shut the fuck up about me and Ben, Louis! You don’t get to say those things, not when you won’t—“

“When I won’t what?”

Harry paces, his eyes resolutely avoiding Louis’. “He’s got a partner, Allen. They’ve been together ages, they even share a house, you know.” Harry’s voice is softer, now. “They have a unique way of seeing the world. There’s a world outside these four walls, Louis. Maybe you would see it if you stopped hiding.” Louis takes a step towards Harry, and Harry moves away. “Today is important to me, it’s important for us, and I thought you’d—“

 _I would_ , Louis thinks. _I’d do anything for you._

His pills rattle in his pocket as he tries to move closer again, and Harry’s eyes narrow before he sighs, defeated. “I’m going to go today,” he says, and his voice is now void of emotion and Louis hates it. “Allen and his friends will be there. They think today will mark the beginning of something important, and I want to be there.”

“You shouldn’t be listening to a group of junkie poets.”

“Which junkie should I listen to, then?” Harry snaps at him, his eyes filled with rage. “The alcoholic who nearly passed out on stage two weeks ago? Or the pill popper that slurs that he loves me but only wants me when he’s high?”

The words hit Louis like a slap; he stumbles backwards, his balance suddenly thrown off. Harry’s staring right into his eyes now, and Louis can’t help but shy away from him. “That’s not—I’m sorry I’m such a fuck up you can’t even feel my—but for what it’s worth, I want you. I always, always want you.”

He doesn’t look up, but he hears the door slamming shut.

*

Louis goes to the studio, anyway, and he waits, and waits, and Harry doesn’t come back. He waits and waits, alternating pills with glasses of bourbon until the technician tells him the next appointment is there and they need Louis to leave.  

When he goes back to his hotel room, he finds Niall there, picking up the shards of glass from the floor. “If we let the hotel see this they’ll call the police,” he says as his only explanation, then goes back to his task.

Louis cuts his palm when he attempts to help, so Niall wraps his hand in a discarded piece of clothing he finds on the floor—Harry’s white shirt, Louis notes—and continues to clean up the chaos Louis doesn’t even remember creating.

Niall doesn’t say anything when Louis starts crying quietly on the floor, or when he attempts to take a pill and spills them all over the floor, mixing with the broken glass.

“Doesn’t really make a difference, does it? Take either and you might die,” Niall says, and Louis’ breathing hitches but he doesn’t answer. He knows what they all think of him; it isn’t much different from what he thinks of himself.

*

It’s not a break up, Louis thinks, if no one calls it quits. Harry isn’t talking to him, but he isn’t avoiding him either, and that makes it even worse. They’re civil, the way Harry and Carl are civil, and it makes Louis sick to his stomach, that it’s all come down to this.

They all still have drinks after the shows, though Louis notes that Harry doesn’t drink more than one beer anymore. He wonders if he’s doing it to make a point, though a part of him likes to think that Harry’s keeping himself sober in order to be able to take care of Louis, were it necessary.

The first real conversation they have comes three weeks after the San Francisco incident, and surprisingly, it’s Harry who comes to him.

“Hey,” he says, from the door of Louis’ dressing room, worrying his lower lip between his teeth, “got a moment?”

Louis, who would drop a meeting with the President just to talk to Harry about the weather, nods and politely asks Jade, their hairstylist, to give them some privacy. She nods politely at Harry when she gets to the door, and Harry waits until she’s gone to walk inside, closing the door behind him. Louis swallows hard, regretting the two gin and tonics he downed in the last half hour, and looks up at Harry, letting him take the lead.

“I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you,” Harry says, taking a seat on the sofa next to Louis. “It wasn’t—I needed some time to clear my head.”

Louis nods, heart pounding in his ears.

“Even with how shitty you were,” Harry says, and despite his playful tone, the words tug at Louis’ heart.

“Harry, I’m sorry—“

“No, Lou, please stop. I need you to hear me out here,” Harry says, adopting a serious tone. “Being with you—I’ve never—I don’t regret it for a moment. You and I—what we had together. I loved being with you. You were there, you know how great it was.”

The past tense is enough for Louis to know how the conversation is going to go, and suddenly he’s thankful that he’s not sober, grateful that Jerry Lee slipped him a jar the night before, and that as soon as Harry leaves he’ll get to numb himself again. For now, he wants to be sick, but he fears what may come out if he opens his mouth.

“You are my favourite person, Louis, and this—“ Harry coughs when his voice starts breaking. “This is the hardest thing I’ve done, but I just. I need this to have closure, or I’ll be stuck. You’re—you’re my best friend, and I want to have you in my life. But not—not like we used to, anymore.”

Louis can’t say anything, so he nods, despite how badly he wants to beg, to try to persuade Harry to change his mind. He’s hurt him enough, he thinks, so he might as well grant him this wish.

“I want us to be friends, like before,” Harry says, and smiles. “I miss talking to you like that.”

He hadn’t noticed that they’d stopped talking, but Louis guesses that it’s hard to keep up a conversation when you’re drunk and high most of the time. His eyes are burning, tears threatening to spill, manages to steady his voice enough to agree: “Friends it is.”

Harry grins at him, takes Louis’ hand in his and squeezes, and it feels like he’s squeezing his heart instead. “Thank you, Lou,” Harry says, and stands up. Louis absently finds the chain around his neck and pulls on it tightly.“I’ll see you tonight, yeah?”

*

Being friends with Harry is the hardest thing Louis has ever done. They’re back to spending their afternoons together, sharing stories, and they stay up late some nights after everyone’s already passed out, on the bus or at the hotel, playing and singing and joking together; it’s enough to keep Louis going, to keep breathing, but every day feels like he’s walking on a line, and any second he might fall over to the other side.

He catches Harry staring at him sometimes, eyes wet and smile gone from his face, and it only takes a second for Harry to put on his mask on and smile his fake smile, but Louis notices. Sometimes his eyes get caught on Harry’s lips for a second too long, and when he looks up at Harry, he finds his own hunger reflected back at him in his eyes.

It’s not as bad as it was before, when Louis didn’t have Harry at all and was stumbling aimlessly through life, but that doesn’t make it any easier to handle now. Louis is constantly torn between respecting Harry’s request to just be friends and the neverending _want_ pounding through his veins.

“I miss you,” he says one afternoon, half-asleep, when he opens his eyes on the tour bus to find that him and Harry are the only ones there.

Harry’s face crumples, but only for a second; he smooths it out with seemingly no effort and presses a kiss to Louis’ forehead, urging him to rest his head on Harry’s shoulder. Louis does, and falls asleep almost instantly, but when he wakes up again Harry’s gone from his side and there’s a crick in his neck he can’t get rid of no matter how much he rubs it.

*

They’re in Chicago when Harry tells him that his friend Zayn lives there, now.

“He was in between jobs, and New York is too expensive these days, so he moved out here with his friend, and now they run a publishing company together,” Harry says, voice tinged with pride. “He’s finally doing well enough that I don’t have to be worrying about him all the time, so it’s nice.”

Louis nods, trying to look supportive. A friend wouldn’t care that Zayn was Harry’s first lover. A friend would be happy that Harry’s happy.

“Zayn wants—he wanted to meet you, last time I saw him but—I know things are different now, so I get it—I think you’d really like him but I get if you don’t want to come—“

“Sounds good,” Louis says, interrupting Harry’s ramble. “I’ll go.”

*

“Nice to put a face to the legend,” Zayn says as he takes his hand, and Louis can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic, if he truly didn’t know what Louis looked like even though his face is showcased on every other magazine.

“Ditto,” says Louis, and squeezes Zayn’s hand just this side of too hard. Zayn’s eyebrow twitches, betraying his air of indifference, but he doesn’t mention it. Tension is thick in the air and Louis can feel Harry’s wary eyes on him, lips tight.

“So, Styles, what are we doing tonight?” Zayn asks, throwing an arm around Harry’s shoulders, and Harry shrugs, grinning.

They get drunk, because of course they do. The tension doesn’t dissipate, but Louis learns to breathe through it, even as he has to school his expression every time he looks over at Zayn and sees him ruffling Harry’s hair or squeezing Harry’s knee.   _That’s mine_ , he thinks, but it isn’t. Not anymore. Harry’s made that clear, day after day, and Louis knows he has no claim to him anymore, even if it makes his insides burn with jealousy to see this.

The thing is that he never asked for details; he doesn’t know the extent of Harry and Zayn’s relationship over the last couple of years, but it doesn’t take a genius to decipher the hungry look in Zayn’s eyes or the way Harry blushes when Zayn’s hand slides up his thigh. If it were anyone else in the world, Louis would be encouraging it, because Zayn has proven to be funny and clever and more beautiful than a man has any right to be, but it isn’t. It’s Harry, and Louis aches with how much he wants him, how much he wishes it were his hand on Harry’s leg.

“So, Louis,” Zayn says, and when Louis looks up he notices Harry’s nowhere to be seen, “care for some blow? Now that our dear friend has gone to freshen up and can’t stop us with his well-meant judgement.”

Louis wants to say no, wants to tell him he wants nothing to do with him, to take his shit and fuck off and leave him and Harry alone, but he can feel the anticipation building in his gut already, his veins thrumming just at the sight of the little bag, so he nods, throat dry, and lets Zayn set up three lines for him on the little glass table.

Zayn goes first, sweeping up the powder in three swift movements, and when he lifts his head from the table to grin at Louis, his pupils have taken over his eyes and his smile is nearly manic. He winks at Louis, and hands him the rolled up dollar bill.

It’s good stuff, stronger than what Oli has been giving him lately, and it goes straight to his head, making him shudder as he gets used to the feeling.

“Good, yeah?” Zayn smirks, and before Louis knows it, he’s changed seats so that they’re sharing the small sofa, their knees pressed together. He can feel the heat radiating from Zayn’s body, knows he’s got his eyes on Louis even if Louis is staring straight at the floor.

“So, you and Harry, then?” Zayn says, leaning into Louis and whispering right in his ear. “What did you think? He’s good, huh? Enough to swear off gals?” Louis wants to punch him in the face, wants to tell him to fuck off and leave him and Harry alone, but he’s still a little hazy from the blow and can’t find the right words, yet.

“The thing about men,” Zayn starts again, probably assuming Louis isn’t going to answer him, “is that it’s better yeah? The sex is rougher, more intense. You don’t have to worry about hurting them like you would with the dames.”

 _I know that_ , Louis wants to say, but he forces himself to stay quiet.

“But gals, you know, they want to settle down. They want security, domesticity. Men don’t want that. Don’t care about that. Fall in love with a man and you’re screwed, because they won’t catch you the way a lady would.”

He’s _wrong_ , Louis thinks, knows, feels in his very bones. He isn’t sure if Zayn truly believes what he’s saying or if he’s just looking to rile Louis up, an instigator if there was one, but Louis doesn’t believe a word of it. He knows Harry loved him, even if he doesn’t anymore, and if Louis ever gets him to take him back, he knows they’d be forever.

“Harry loves cock too much to settle down,” Zayn says. “You should have seen him as a young boy, new to the scene, dying to please. He was so wanton, so eager to learn.”

Louis feels his body trembling, knows Zayn can feel it too, but he refuses to react and give Zayn what he’s looking for. “Shouldn’t talk about your friend like that,” he says, despite knowing better, because he can’t handle what Zayn is saying.

“He wouldn’t disagree, if he heard me. Have you never asked him where he learned everything he’s probably taught you, _now_? Loving Harry is a bad idea, Louis,” Zayn says, and his tone changes when he utters the last statement, all teasing gone from his voice. “He’s not the answer you’re looking for. Quit while you’re ahead, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time. And a lot of heartache.”

He stands up from the couch and pats Louis on the shoulder. “Queers like us, we’re not meant to have that happy ending.”

It takes a moment for the words to hit, and Louis feels like he’s been slapped when they do. He wants to pull Zayn back down, tell him that’s he’s wrong. Louis has always known he wouldn’t get a happy ending, deep down. At times, he’s been naïve enough to hope—back when he met Danielle, when he got signed, and once again the first time Harry kissed him—but it’s always been that: childish hope.

At least he got a happy middle, short-lived as it was. He got his music out, made a name for himself, met Harry. Maybe it’s not a lot, but it’s better than he ever thought he’d do, and it’s okay. He’s made his peace with it.

Harry, on the other hand, the most genuine person Louis has ever met, he deserves that happy ending more than anyone else in the world, and Louis will hang around forever if only to make sure that happens.

Zayn is wrong. Maybe not about himself, and not about Louis, but he’s wrong about Harry.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about—” Louis says, and he’s about to start ranting, tell Zayn that he’s got Harry all wrong—a part of Louis wants to tell him that he isn’t queer, but he doesn’t think Zayn would believe him, anyway, takes one to know one and all that—but as soon as he stands up, he spots Harry coming out of the bathroom, and he freezes.

Zayn follows his eyes and smirks. “Shall we head out, then?”

Harry looks suspiciously at the rolled up bill on the table; Louis can feel the disappointment rolling out of him in waves, but he doesn’t say anything, and nods, grabbing his jacket and walking out the door.

Louis doesn’t know how he ends up driving, how they let him, but they wind up outside a grey building with the windows covered in newspaper, and Zayn jumps out before the car has come to a stop.

“Keep the car running” Zayn says, hooking a finger through Harry’s belt loop and pulling him out of the car. “We won’t be long.” He has the audacity to blink at Louis, like they’re in on the same joke, and puts his arm around Harry’s shoulder like he has any claim to him. If Louis had any doubt about what was happening before, it’s long gone now.

Harry comes back out about an hour later, lips red and pupils blown, and Louis has circled around the block enough times that he’s made a game out of it, popping a pill every ten laps. He’s nearly run out, now, and he’s partially glad that Calvin gave him a bad batch, _not as strong, cheaper, easier to shake off_ , because he can almost hide the way his heart breaks as Harry wipes off his mouth on the sleeve of his velvet coat, leaving a white streak close to the cuff. He can’t help shuddering, and Harry’s eyes widen, hurt flashing over his features before he catches himself.

“So you and Zayn, then?”

“‘s not like that,” Harry says, frowning, and turns away from Louis to look at the window.

“What is it like, then?”

“None of your business,” Harry snaps.

Louis’ grip on the steering wheel tightens. “It is when I could get beat up for driving a fag around,” he spits.

“That’s rich coming from you,” Harry says, and turns his body completely to the right so Louis can’t make out his face.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Louis asks, pointlessly, his voice coming out higher than he means it to.

“You know perfectly well what I’m talking about Lou, now leave me alone.”

“I’m not a taxi cab,” Louis spits. “I’m not gonna drive you around so you can drag about on your knees, blowing boys like a cheap whore.”

“Like I did for you, you mean?” Harry asks, and Louis is sure he didn’t mean to sound as vulnerable as he does. It feels like the world has shifted after those words, and Louis steps on the brake, hard, making Harry jolt forward and turn towards him again.

“You know it wasn’t like that,” he finds himself saying as Harry’s eyes lock onto his, green and glistening in the street light, he can’t seem to stop himself. “It’s different with us, I’m–”

“You’re what, Louis?”

The words are stuck in his throat, too foreign after too many years of not hearing them, of repeating them without meaning. He opens his mouth but no sound comes out, and he has to close his eyes to ground himself, Harry’s gaze too honest for Louis to get a grip.

“Harry, I–” He reaches a hand towards him, leaning in as he does, and all sounds around them drown out as Harry’s eyes flicker down, falling to his mouth, and then he’s moving forward. Louis tries to cup his face and misses, and he realizes after following Harry’s horrified stare that his hands are shaking.

“Get out of the car, Louis.”

“Haz, Harry, wait–” he begs, and his speech is slurred enough that he can tell the last pill was a mistake. He shouldn’t have taken that swing of vodka, either.

“Shut up and get out, you can’t drive like this.”

He can barely keep his eyes open as he climbs into the passenger seat, without bothering to get out of the car. He hears Harry close the door on the driver’s side and the engine start, and he attempts to say something, but it all comes out mumbled and slurred.

“Save it for when you’re sober,” Harry says, shutting him up. “When you actually mean what you say.”

*

Harry is gone when Louis wakes up. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, doesn’t recognize the room he’s in at all once he manages to open his eyes and survey his surroundings. His suitcase is by the bed, which means Harry went through the trouble of getting his things before heading out, and Louis allows himself a moment of hope as he looks around for any sign that Harry hasn’t actually left.

He isn’t in the clothes he wore the night before, he notices as he sits up, the fabric much too soft to be his own. He remembers being sick on himself, so Harry must have helped him out of his shirt. His mouth tastes like a dead animal, and he knows he probably reeks, but instead of getting up and heading for the shower, he pulls up the collar of his shirt and takes a deep breath, taking in the scent of Harry’s cologne, still strong enough that it makes Louis dizzy.

It takes a while, but his head clears enough that he can get up without stumbling, and he takes a quick shower before pulling Harry’s shirt back on and sitting on the bed, surveying the room.

He’d assumed, upon waking up, that he was in Harry’s hotel room, but now that he’s taken a better look, he realizes there’s no sign of anyone else staying there: no extra suitcases; no stray pieces of clothing, no guitar lying around. The room is pristine and untouched and Louis realizes that Harry isn’t coming back later, no matter how long he waits. He calls reception, makes them put him through to Niall’s room, and waits, heart pounding, for the confirmation he’s dreading.

“He left this morning,” Niall says cautiously. “He said—he told Paul he had to leave, a family emergency I think.”

“Fuck.”

“Lou, are you alright? Did something—”

“Fuck,” Louis repeats, louder this time, then throws the phone across the room, snapping the cable from the wall as he does so. He reaches for his discarded clothes from the night before, folded neatly at the end of the bed, reeking the way Louis imagines he does, too; he puts his hand into one of the pockets, digging desperately for his case, and comes up empty handed. He searches the jacket for good measure, because he had it last night, he’s certain of it, and he’s lost a lot of things since he started touring, but he’s always held onto this.

There’s a knock on the door just as Louis jumps out of the bed, his head throbbing painfully in complaint, and falls to his knees, searching the floor under the wooden bed frame and all the drawers on the bedside table. He rips the covers off the bed, shaking them around in hope of hearing the rattling of pills against metal, anxiety growing in his chest the longer he goes without them. His breathing is short, the tremble in his hands is starting to get worse, and Louis panics as he looks around the room. He shoves and pushes and pulls, searches frantically over and over until he’s standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by strewn clothes and broken glass, like a hurricane just swept by, and it hits him that Harry left, again, and he isn’t coming back this time.

*

The first two days after Harry leaves go by in a blur. Louis stays drunk for most of it, numbing his hungover with pills and drowning out everyone’s concern with vodka. It’s not like anyone makes the connection between his breakdown and Harry’s departure, anyway; everyone just thinks that he’s a fuck up, which—there’s a reason Harry left, after all.

Everyone ignores the elephant in the room; no one brings up Harry or his absence, and his slot on stage is fixed without consulting Louis, a change in the line-up that goes by unnoticed by most when the new setup is passed around at rehearsal (alas, not by Louis, who rips the paper in half and storms out of the room). No one even comments on Louis’ increased drinking, the bags under his eyes.

There’s something to be said, Louis thinks, about how easily everyone will pretend everything’s okay as long as it keeps the money flowing.

It’s infuriating, to watch everyone go on with their days as if nothing happened, as if Harry’s drop from the tour isn’t reason enough to put a halt to their lives like it’s done to Louis’. He doesn’t understand how they all can just move on, like it’s insignificant, like it isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to all of them.

What’s even worse is that no one asks Louis how he’s doing. It’s not like he would talk about it, really, but he knows by the pitying looks Elvis throws him sometimes that he looks as bad as he feels.

They’ve got three days left of tour when he snaps.

“You don’t even care, do you?” he slurs, digging his finger into Niall’s chest. “Did you ever even—“

“Lou, why don’t you sit down and have some water—put your drink down—“

“You sound just like him,” Louis says, accusatory, stumbling against Niall. “I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

“Is this about Harry leaving?” Niall asks, and Louis can see him shaking his head even from his spot on the floor. “Louis, it’s been weeks, you have to move past it.”

 _It’s been_ a _week_ , Louis wants to say. One. Nine days and some hours; Louis took off his watch around the time he got his fourth drink. It has not been _weeks_ since Harry left. Niall is wrong.

“So it was like that, then?” Niall asks, and when Louis looks up he sees that his eyes are narrowed, “if you’re counting days and all.”

“That’s none of your business.”

Niall laughs—a cold, angry sound that’s nothing like him. “You don’t get to accuse me of not caring and then bark at me when I try to talk to you about it.”

Louis knows this is the time to apologize, or duck his head and let things go, but anger’s roaring in his chest and he can’t muster the strength to keep it in, so he snaps, “Are you worried that your friend is a fag? You gonna leave the band, now?”

“I never even—Jesus, Louis!”

“Don’t use the Lord’s name—“ he says, out of habit, and Niall loses it.

“Don’t even give me that right now!” Niall snaps, near shouting, and Louis flinches; he’s never seen Niall act like this. “You’re my best friend, you _asshole_ . Do you think I would—do you think I don’t already know? I’ve been on tour with both of you. I remember the mess you were last time he left; I was there when you trashed the room in San Francisco—I _know_ , Louis, I’ve always known. And guess what? I was still here, because I thought our friendship was—because I goddamned care about you—“

“Nial, I’m—“ Louis makes to move closer.

“God, you’re such a mess,” Niall says, and takes a step back, looking disgusted. “Harry did a good thing leaving when he did.”

*

They’re dancing, somewhere, and Louis doesn’t remember how he got here, or who brought him, but the music’s pumping through his blood. There’s a girl, Briana, with blown pupils and an almost manic smile, holding his hand and whispering things into his ear; he doesn’t know where she came from, how they met, but she’s been giving him drinks and coke. She licks around her pinkie and laughs, almost in disbelief, and Louis leans in to ask her what she’s taking.

“It’s happiness,” she says, and then her mouth is on his. It’s barely a kiss, just the press of lips and a tongue pushing the rough powder into his mouth, but it’s all wrong, lips too thin, too sticky and tasting artificially of something akin to strawberry, no strong hands gripping his hips or stubble scratching his cheek.

“Love,” she adds when she pulls away with a smirk, “think of that feeling you get when you get on stage, of the first time you kissed that girl you liked so much—think about the best feeling you’ve ever felt. That’s what this is going to be like.”

Louis thinks of green eyes, staring sleepily at him in the early morning when the rest of the world is still asleep; he thinks of late nights playing guitar and a scratchy voice humming along; of shared laughs in dressing rooms and watching the snow fall from a hotel window in Massachusetts.

There’s excitement building in his stomach, and he feels something pulling at his lips, forcing him to smile, but there’s nothing ecstatic about the way he feels. _This isn’t happiness_ , he thinks. _It isn’t love_.

Someone starts counting down around them, and the crowd joins in, and then Briana’s lips are back on his, pushy and insistent, and Louis lets it happen, body too loose to care. His head is still back in Boston, with kiss-swollen lips smiling at him, arms tight around him and warmth growing in his stomach, the greatest thing he’s ever felt.

Briana bites him, trying to get his attention back, and Louis laughs, because it’s all wrong. He stumbles away from her and walks towards the door, navigating through the crowd of bodies, and he laughs, and laughs and laughs.

He thinks he hears someone saying his name, and his eyes catch on a pair of green ones staring intensely at him, but the shape is wrong, and Harry wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this, anyway. Louis laughs; he’s too high to care now, anyway.

Harry, Harry, Harry.

Happy New Year.


	8. 1961

Tour ends.

Louis’ life, surprisingly, doesn’t.

His last show goes wrong in every possible way, and he ends up ripping the strings off his guitar after the second one breaks on him; he stumbles off the stage to a crowd of shaking heads and disappointed smiles, and then it’s over. He gets put on a plane and sent back home to an empty house that he doesn’t remember buying, and for the first time since the day he stepped off the plane in Nevada, four years and six lifetimes ago, he feels alone.

Niall isn’t taking his calls, and Liam is on tour. Carl said he would come see him, but hasn’t in the month that he’s been there, and Elvis sent his regards in the shape of a new powder he got from a friend, but made it clear he wouldn’t make it south for a while.

Which means Louis is alone with his thoughts, and his pills, and his liquor.

He hears about Harry on the radio, but changes the station almost every time—whenever he doesn’t, it ends with him smashing a bottle or two against the wall before passing out on the floor.

He doesn’t miss human interaction—Oli visits him often enough to bring him his stash and some groceries—but he still wakes up sometimes and reaches for someone while he’s still sleep hazed, the cold realization washing over him like a bucket of ice and settling deep in his bones when he realizes the bed is empty beside him.

*

He doesn’t know who sent him the tickets, but Louis throws up as soon as he sees what they are: Harry Styles at the Rhyman, March 12th, 1961, on his first solo tour since ‘58.

Louis hasn’t seen Harry since December, hasn’t heard from him in as many months, and now he’s holding two tickets to see him at the auditorium where they first met all those years ago.

There’s three weeks until the show, and Louis tells himself resolutely that he isn’t going. He’s got to work on his album—Niall is only now coming around to working with him again—and he doesn’t have anyone that would go with him, anyway, so he can’t go.

He thinks about it and thinks about it; even through the haze of the drugs and the crushing pain of coming down from them, the possibility of seeing Harry is the only thing in his head.

The day of the show, Louis finds himself standing in front of the Ryman hours before doors open, a bottle of pills and the last of his coke heavy in his pocket.

*

Of all the people Louis would expect to run into at the bar across from the venue, Zayn isn’t one of them. He thought Zayn was off in New York City, working on his music—he’s got a song on the radio and everything these days, and Louis doubts it came as easily as it did to Niall and him—so he’s surprised to find Zayn here, waiting for Harry instead.

Maybe he and Zayn aren’t that different, after all.

He doesn’t say anything, just tilts his bottle of rum in Zayn’s direction, and Zayn takes it as an invitation to sit down next to him.

“Hiya there,” Zayn says, snatching the bottle off of him, and Louis is about to complain when Zayn shoves a small bag of white powder into his hand.

He doesn’t remember Zayn offering, or himself accepting, but somehow they end up crammed inside Zayn’s car with Zayn’s mouth on Louis’ neck and his hand down his pants, thumb swirling over the head of his cock and making Louis see stars behind his eyelids. They’ve done all of Zayn’s coke in less than an hour, and Louis’ veins are thrumming with energy.

“You know, for a moment,” Zayn says, as he pulls away, undoing his jeans and taking out his cock, “I thought it’d be permanent—you and Harry.”

Louis opens his mouth to reply, but Zayn takes that opportunity to push his cock in, and it isn’t easy to talk around a mouthful of dick, so Louis hums and closes his eyes.

“He had me fooled, talking about the future, and his dreams, and how all he could picture for himself was living in a cabin by the lake with you, until you grew old,” Zayn continues, between pants, as he thrusts in and out of Louis’ mouth. A whine erupts from Louis’ throat, and Zayn takes it as a sign to increase his pace, taking both of Louis’ hands in his and thrusting deeper, hitting the back of Louis’ throat.

“You’re so beautiful, Louis,” Zayn says after he comes, pulling out and replacing his cock with his mouth right away, licking all over as if he’s trying to chase his own taste. “So fucking beautiful.”

He pushes Louis over the console between the seats, shoving his pants down and biting Louis’ left cheek. “Obscene,” he says, spreading Louis apart, “This ass of yours. I’ve been thinking about it since I met you.” He licks up from Louis’ balls all the way to his hole, pushing his tongue in insistently right away, swirling it and making Louis’ knees buckle.

“I used to think about this all the time,” Zayn says as he pushesin a finger along with his tongue, “getting you all loose and wet for me, then taking you hard, me and then Harry, and then both at the same time, until you were sticky and full of our come.”

Louis closes his eyes and bites down hard on his lip to stop the moan threatening to escape.

“I’d make Harry get on his knees, then, and eat it all out of you,” Zayn says, and he’s fucking Louis with three fingers now. “He’d love it, of course, loves to please, our Harry. And he would love eating it out of you, you know, his favourite, favourite boy.”

Louis comes with a hoarse shout, panting into the leather seat as Zayn removes his fingers, pressing a last kiss to his cheek.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out, Louis,” is all Zayn says before opening the door and stumbling out, reaching for the bottle of beer he left on the sidewalk earlier. “I hated you for it but—I really thought it’d be you and Harry—I thought you’d make it.”

Louis stays there long after Zayn leaves, sat on the curb with his eyes set on the back door of the Rhyman, trying not to let himself hope, until he’s snorted up all of the contents in the bag Zayn gave him and his head feels full of cotton.

He plays their conversation over and over again in his head—he shivers every time he thinks of Zayn’s tongue up his ass—and by the time the sun comes up, Louis is set on his decision, and he finds himself propped against the pole of a payphone, trying to keep his head upright as he asks Niall to pick him up.

*

He’s still riding the high when he signs the papers, the words hazy and unfocused on the document before him as he tries to sign his name on the dotted line. He asks repeatedly for them to put Harry’s name down next to his, but the lender insists time and time again that they cannot add someone to the title unless they’re present at the time of signing. Louis huffs, annoyed, every time they give him the same explanation, muttering under his breath how useless he finds everyone in attendance.

It’s two p.m., and Louis can’t remember sleeping in days, unless he’s counting the hour long drive to the house, which he spent dozing off in the backseat. He can feel the tremor in his hands start to get worse, but he’s fine, fine, fine, because he’s getting the house and everything will fall into place after that. Louis knows it, and Zayn knew it, and Louis is going to tell Harry and then he will know, too, and everything will be okay.

Someone congratulates him, and someone else offers him a flute of champagne, and one turns into three, and at some point, after he’s lost count, someone scoops him up from the sofa he’s sprawled over and carries him into a car. He slumps against the door, closing his eyes as soon as he hears the engine start.

“How are you feeling there, Tommo?” Niall asks when Louis comes to, blinking away blurry spots in his vision as he scrambles to sit up on the passenger seat.

“Alright,” he mutters unconvincingly, making Niall laugh.

“Got you drunk to make you pay extra?” he asks, but doesn’t prod when Louis shakes his head. “How’s the house?”

Louis feels his smile widening despite himself. “It’s great.”

“When are you moving in, then?” Niall asks, and Louis shakes his head.

“I’m not moving in.”

The car jolts to a stop in the middle of the deserted dirt road and Niall turns to look at him. “What?”

“It’s not—it’s not my house,” Louis explains, somewhat sheepishly, and looks away from Niall. “I got it for Harry.”

The silence that stretches between them after that is enough to let Louis know what Niall thinks of this.

“Does he—does he know?” Niall asks, his face suddenly tense. “Did you buy a house for him without even telling him?”

Louis looks over and finds Niall looking at him incredulously; annoyance sparks inside him. Of course Niall doesn’t get it.

“It’s his dream house, Niall, okay?”

“Lou—“ Niall tries again after a moment, going for a softer approach, and Louis despises the pity in his voice. “You can’t buy someone a house because—“

“He’s not just someone,” Louis insists. “You wouldn’t get it.”

“Get what?” Niall asks, shaking his head, and he sounds pissed. “Your special connection? The bond you share? How you understand each other better than anyone else?”

“Yes.”

“God, Louis, it’s been years. You have to move on, man. You’re never gonna get better if you keep—“

“It hasn’t.”

“What?”

Louis looks away, hands closing into tight fists.

“Louis, it hasn’t what?”

“It hasn’t been years—we’ve. We’ve always.”

Niall’s eyes are full of pity when he starts talking again. “I know that, Lou, I know. That is not—I mean _him_. He’s not good for you. He’s been ruining you for years. Look at yourself now. You’re a mess.”

“You think this is because of him?” Louis hears his voice getting louder but can’t seem to control himself, even when Niall visibly flinches. “You’re wrong. You hear me Niall? You’re _wrong_! If Harry wasn’t—if we hadn’t—it’d be worse. I’d be. I wouldn’t be, at all.”

Silence stretches between them, and then the meaning of the words seem to hit Niall, his eyes widening. “Lou—“

“He’s—he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. My one good thing, you know?” Louis feels raw as the words leave his mouth. “The one that keeps me going, no matter what.”

“Oh, Lou.”

Louis shakes his head, because Niall doesn’t get it, but it’s okay. His pity is wrong, misplaced, and Louis doesn’t care because he _knows_ what he’s doing. Niall wasn’t there. Niall didn’t hear Harry talk about this house like it’s the meaning of everything. Louis remembers the look on his face when he told Louis about that summer as clearly as he remembers the first time he heard Harry’s voice, as the first time they met, kissed, loved.

He needs to see Harry now.

“You need to take me to Harry’s,” Louis says after the silence has gone on for too long.

“Louis—”

“I have to see him, Niall.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Louis huffs, staring incredulously at Niall, and opens the car door. “Thanks for the ride, Nialler.”

*

The sky is clearing up when Louis finally makes it to Harry’s house. His feet ache, and he lost one of his shoes somewhere during the night, but he’s here, with the stack of papers that prove his ownership of the house and which will earn him Harry’s forgiveness.

He’s planning on knocking on the door, doing things properly, but he crashes into the fence as he enters the driveway, the metallic noise loud enough to wake anyone around.

“Who’s there?”

The first thing Louis notices when Harry comes into view, wearing a threadbare white tee and tight blue jeans, is that his hair is longer, and he looks more beautiful than ever. He’s squinting in the early morning light, and his face morphs into shock when he finally recognizes him.

“Louis,” Harry says, breathless, “what are you doing here?”

“Came to see you, didn’t I?”

“Louis—”

“I have something to tell you,” he says, and his chest tightens when Harry winces in response. “Or, to show you, actually.”

“Lou, where’s your car?”

“Don’t have one.” Louis shrugs, stumbling as he takes a step towards Harry. “They took my license.” He doesn’t elaborate who _they_ are. Harry watches the news, he must know.

“How did you get here?”

“Walkin’,” he says and takes another step to make a point. “Niall wouldn’t drive me, and I had to see you.”

Something flashes across Harry’s face, but it’s gone as soon as it came, too fast for Louis to even attempt deciphering it. “Louis—we’re—it’s thirty miles away from yours.”

“Feet don’t count how much they’ve walked,” Louis offers as an explanation. “They just move.”

Harry’s breath hitches, but he shakes his head, eyes furious. If he hadn’t spent the past month dreaming of this face, Louis would probably flinch. “You can’t—“Harry says, and rubs a hand over his face, “Why are you doing this?”

“You know why.”

A head peeks out from behind Harry, and Louis thinks he recognizes him as Jeff; he looks between Harry and Louis with wide eyes before sneaking back into the house. Harry follows Louis’ gaze and turns around, shaking his head.

“It’s seven in the morning, Louis; the kids are asleep inside—“

The kids, of course. Louis forgets, sometimes, that Harry has a life separate to him, a support system, a family. Louis thought himself a part of it, once: thought he’d meet Jeff and Glenne’s kids and be invited to Gemma’s wedding and attend Nick Grimshaw’s exclusive parties. He’s learning his place, now.

He sighs, defeated, and meets Harry’s eyes again. “I’m sorry—I’ll. I’ll go—”

His foot gets caught on a root and sends him straight to the floor. He tastes the dirt before the throbbing pain starts spreading from his jaw to his temple, and he feels something wet on his left eyebrow. He’s numb enough that it doesn’t bother him much.

A pair of hands on his hips help him sit up, then bring him to his feet. Louis attempts to shake the dirt off his clothes, but Harry takes hold of his wrist and stops him, putting his other arm around Louis’ waist; together, they make their way inside the house.

Harry grabs a wet towel and slowly wipes away the mud and blood from Louis’ face, then hands him a glass of water, which Louis spills all over himself. He manages to drink half before he retches on the kitchen sink.

A second set of arms help Harry carry Louis to the bedroom, setting him down on the bed. Louis keeps his eyes closed, but he hears Harry thank the other person—Louis assumes Jeff—before sitting down on the bed next to him.

“I’m sorry,” Louis mumbles; he sits up, trying to reach for Harry, and another wave of nausea hits him.

“It’s fine, Lou,” Harry says, sounding resigned. “Just drink some more water, you’ll feel better.”

“I love you,” Louis says, accepting the glass of water and spitting it all over Harry when he attempts to swallow it and his throat shuts down.

“You need to sleep.”

“Does that mean you don’t love me?” Louis presses, scooting closer to look at Harry, the world spinning around them.

Harry simply rolls his eyes. “It means you’re drunk. And high. And need to sleep.”

“Sleep it off, you mean,” Louis says, trying not to show his disappointment.

“Yes, Louis, that’s what I mean,” Harry says, and sighs, pulling Louis up by the armpits and guiding him to lie down.

Louis has to fight another wave of nausea as he turns so that he’s facing Harry. “I love you,” he tries again. “I wish you’d take _that_ seriously, if not me.” Harry doesn’t offer a reply right away, but he doesn’t make a move to get off the bed, so Louis takes all the energy left in his body and uses it to reach for Harry’s hand and intertwine their fingers.

“I wish you wouldn’t only say that when you’re drunk,” Harry says, at last, and squeezes Louis’ hand one more time before sighing and closing his eyes.

*

Harry is still by his side when Louis wakes up in a panic in the middle of the night, the whirring sound of a circular saw shrieking in his ears. He’s still wearing the clothes he had when Louis had arrived, stiff jeans and a soft white tee, and he comes awake as soon as he feels Louis move on the mattress.

“Lou?” he asks, his voice laden with sleep. “Y’alright? You sick?”

Louis shakes his head. “Just—just a nightmare.” He idly notes he’s covered in sweat, and makes an attempt to shrug off his t-shirt before realizing he’s still wearing the shirt he wore to the closing of the house, too many buttons over black fabric, too hot and clingy in the Southern summer heat.

Hands meet his over the buttons and he startles, his eyes shooting up to meet Harry’s in the moonlit room. He swallows hard and slowly, not breaking eye contact, and moves his hands away to let Harry work the buttons, then slide his hands up to Louis’ shoulders to take the shirt off.

“Thank you,” Louis says awkwardly, and looks down, cheeks going pink as he eyes his wrinkled dress pants.

Harry doesn’t utter a word, but his hands slowly find the button and undo it, and then he’s crawling in between Louis’ knees and sliding his hands over his hips to find the hem of his pants and pull them off.

He feels exposed, lying in his briefs with Harry kneeling before him, regardless of how many times they’ve done this before. He’s been shocked into stillness, so he takes a deep breath, and after what feels what an eternity he manages to let out a, “You, too?”

Everything stops for a moment as Harry looks up, contemplative, but after a second he shakes his head, offering Louis a small smile.

“I’m good.” He crawls back up the bed, pulling the covers off and sliding in, shuffling before throwing the duvet over himself and Louis. “C’mere,” he says, in a whisper, and Louis feels a careful finger sliding down his forearm, Harry’s hand locking with his. “You drive me fucking crazy, you know that?” Harry says, and Louis isn’t sure whether he’s supposed to reply or not, so he doesn’t.

Harry isn’t in bed the next time he wakes up, but the light filtering through the floral print curtains lets him know that it’s somewhere around noon. There’s no one in the kitchen when Louis sneaks out of Harry’s room for something to drink, so he deems it safe to go exploring. He checks every cabinet for some scotch, or even beer, or maybe the grass he knows Harry enjoys smoking from time to time, but comes up empty-handed.

“Louis Tomlinson,” a voice says behind him when he steps into the living room, and Louis turns around to find Zayn standing in front of him. “Wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

Images of the last time they saw each other flash through Louis’ head; it feels like a lifetime ago. “Likewise.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, unmoving, before Zayn smirks and starts going through his pockets. “I got something you might like.”

The door opens just as Zayn is taking a small plastic bag from the inside pocket of his coat. Harry walks in, followed closely by Jeff, who stops in his tracks as soon as he spots Zayn and Louis, and leaves as quickly as he came.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Harry asks, his voice filled with rage. “What are you doing here?”

“Good to see you too, Haz,” Zayn says calmly, slipping the baggie back where it was. “It’s been a while; I missed you.”

“I asked you what you were doing here,” Harry presses, moving towards Louis to cup his cheek. Zayn’s brow furrows when he sees Harry’s hand, and Louis feels a small tingle of satisfaction at that.

“Lou, are you—did you?” Harry asks, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt, pulling him closer.

“No,” Louis says, eyes locking with Harry’s, and the clear disappointment in them makes him look down before he makes his admission. “Not yet.”

“Fuck, Lou,” Harry groans, and Louis buries his head in Harry’s neck.

“I didn’t—I’m sorry. I didn’t.”

“I can’t keep doing this, Louis,” Harry says, his voice undone, and he attempts to step away from Louis.

“No,” Louis finds himself saying in a desperate tone, “please don’t—I can’t. You can’t give up on me just yet.” Something in his voice must surprise Harry, because he hesitates before he pulls back, and Louis uses that momentum to crush their lips together.

Zayn’s eyes are the size of the moon when they pull apart. “So. That’s happening.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Harry says, so harsh it makes Louis’ eyes widen. “I told you to keep your shit away from Louis.”

“Relax, man, I didn’t know—I didn’t know it was like this.”

“You know shit, man,” Harry says, mocking, “but I’m going to make it very clear this time. Keep your nasty drugs away from Louis. Or I’ll give your name to security to make sure you get arrested if you ever try to approach him.”

Zayn backs away automatically, shaking his head. Harry doesn’t need to mention that Zayn’s career is hanging by a thread, that his connections to the right people are the only thing keeping his music afloat, despite his talent. They all know Zayn can’t afford to talk as freely as the rest of them can. It’s a low blow, for Harry to threaten him like this, and so out of character that Louis gapes at him—the idea that Harry would ruin someone who once was in his closest circle just to protect Louis sounds impossible to his ears.

“I see how it is,” Zayn mutters bitterly.

“It was nothing to do with you. I told you not to bring that shit around. I’m not saying it again Zayn; you make the choice. You know what’s at stake.”

Zayn looks between them one more time before shaking his head, then brings to fingers to his temple and salutes them. “Got it. Bye Lou.”

He doesn’t look back as he goes for the door, letting it slam behind him.

“I’m sorry,” Louis says, reaching for Harry’s hand, but Harry pulls away, shaking his head.

“Just get some rest, Lou,” Harry says, and walks away.

Louis stands in the middle of the living room, completely at a loss, for what feels like an eternity, until he assumes that Harry isn’t coming back for him and takes a seat on one of Harry’s yellow armchairs, picking up the book that’s been left on the armrest. His head is killing him too much for him to read, but it helps to have something in his hands, at least.

Harry storms into the room about an hour later with the stack of papers Louis brought him the day before and throws it on Louis’ lap, eyes furious.

“What is this, Louis?” His tone tells Louis that he knows exactly what it is, but his reaction isn’t what Louis was hoping for. Maybe Niall was right about that.

“It’s a—it’s a house,” he explains, voice barely audible. “Your house.”

Harry’s eyes widen, and he shakes his head. “You’re at my house,” he says, enunciating every word. “This is my house. You can’t just—”

“It’s your house,” Louis explains softly, trying to control the emotion in his voice. “It’s the house you told me about.” He picks up one of the papers, the one with the floor plan, and shows it to Harry, trying to prove his point.

“Louis—“

“You said we—” Louis starts again, voice trembling, “It was your dream to live there. You said—it’s your house, so you can live there with me.”

“It was just words, Louis. Just wishful thinking. I don’t want you to buy me anything,” Harry roars, and points at the paper that Louis is holding. “ _That_ isn’t my house.”

Jeff walks into the room with a girl no older than two, dressed all in white and wearing a tiara, in his arms.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” he says apologetically, looking between Harry and Louis with a frown, “but Ella said you promised you would take her to the city today.”  

Harry’s face transforms at that, and his anger melts away as he sets his gaze on the little girl, who’s looking up at him with wide, hopeful eyes. “Of course,” he says, the conversation with Louis completely in the past as he takes Ella in his arms. “Ready to get that Sweet Sue?”

Ella giggles and nods eagerly, and Harry barely glances back at Louis before resolutely turning around and leaving the room, Jeff trailing behind him.

Louis waits. Glenne must be at the house still: he’s heard the baby’s cries twice already, so she must have stayed behind to care for him while Jeff and Harry took Ella to get her doll. He’s not expecting her to come up to talk to him, but he wishes she would.

He should be used to be left behind by now.

He’s too sick to eat, but he goes back to the kitchen for a glass of water and finds two empty bottles of gin in the trash that weren’t there earlier. He assumes Jeff or Harry must have found them and poured the contents down the drain. It’d be heart-warming, Louis thinks, if Harry hadn’t just been so clear about wanting nothing to do with him.

Their conversation plays over and over in his head, and he tries to convince himself to try once more, to give it another go and attempt to explain himself to Harry better, but in the end he decides it isn’t worth it. It’s been three hours since Harry left when Louis makes up his mind, and, after stacking the documents neatly on Harry’s dining room table, he picks up his jacket where it’s hanging up outside and leaves.

*

The cement wall is hard against his back, the cold seeping through the fabric of his dress jacket, settling into his bones.

It’s been hours. He can’t tell exactly how long because they took his watch, along with his shoelaces, and the chain he always wears around his neck. It’s the first time he’s taken it off for anything other than to shower, and his neck feels weird without it. Naked.

He’s still riding the last of the high, but it won’t be long before he comes down. His fingers are starting to twitch, ever so slightly, and there’s a dull thrumming in his temples, slowly spreading around his head. God, he could really use a drink right now.

He can hear steps right outside the cell, the sound of them mixing with the _thump, thump, thump_ of his heart, pounding in his ears. He’s no expert, but something tells him that regardless of the situation he’s gotten himself into, his heart should not be beating almost out of his chest while he’s lying down. He tries to will it to slow down, to no avail. The footsteps walk away, and Louis is left alone.

There are no windows in this cell, and the door isn’t barred, but a thick metal plate with a peephole. There’s a lamp on the wall behind him that blinks every so often, leaving him in almost complete darkness for moments at a time until it decides to work again. When that happens, the dim light that filters through the peephole washes over the first half of the room, and Louis’ shadow shifts, transforms, and he would swear his hair grows four inches, his shoulders broaden—he hears his own voice, morphing, deepening, a soft, cheerful melody filling his ears, lyrics at the tip of his tongue.

It’s only the drugs.

He shakes his head, closes his eyes, and by the time he opens them again, the lamp is back on, and Louis’ shadow has disappeared almost completely.

A voice in the back of his head keeps asking about Harry, but the high had been strong enough that he’s managed to ignore it so far, to focus on something else. It’s fading now, and the little voice keeps getting stronger. The same question, over and over again, and it makes Louis slam his fist against the wall because it doesn’t fucking matter what Harry thinks. Shouldn’t matter. That’s all done with, anyway.

And if there had been any chance, a sliver of hope of fixing things before, it’s definitely gone now. He wonders how long until the news hit the papers, the radio stations. How long until everyone in the country is hearing about what a fuck-up Louis Tomlinson is? He can’t help wondering what Harry will think when he hears, if he’ll shake his head, frown knowingly because he’d warned everyone that this was going to happen, and no one listened.

Especially Louis.

He hears footsteps outside his cell again, only this time they stop in front of the door. The peephole opens, but it’s too small to see anything but a pair of brown eyes staring at him.

“Tomlinson, you’re out of here,” the man says, his voice muffled by the sound of the clinking keys as he opens the door.

For a moment, Louis thinks that maybe it isn’t the end of the world, that maybe there’s a way he can get out of this one undamaged, and then he turns at the end of the corridor and there, on the other side of the glass door, is Harry.


	9. 1962

 

Detoxing is a bitch. That’s really the only way to put it.

Louis remembers Zayn telling him about it: about the withdrawal; the shakes; how it changes depending what you took last, what you’re coming down from. He’d said the first few days were the hardest, the most intense, and that past that first wave he’d be feeling good again.

Then again, Zayn had never really stayed sober to make it to the next part.

The first week is a fever dream that goes by in a blur. Louis sleeps for most of it –when he isn’t throwing up, that is—and he doesn’t eat at all, despite Harry’s insistence.

Harry hardly leaves his side, though, and that makes it better somehow. There’s cold fingers on his forehead when it feels like his body’s been set on fire, like his skin is melting away, and a set of strong arms wrapped around him when his body starts thrashing against his will, so violently that he manages to bruise himself the first time.

He has his first painless awakening on a Monday morning, five days before Harry’s birthday. He opens his eyes, dreading the jabbing pain at his temple, but it never comes, and he rolls over towards the wall to escape the too-bright light that’s showering him. He jumps in surprise when his eyes find Harry, already awake and leaning on his elbow, wearing a soft, too-worn t-shirt and Louis’ favourite smile.  

“Hi,” Louis whispers, and Harry’s smile widens.

“Good morning?” Harry asks. He runs his fingers through Louis’ fringe, tucking it back behind his ear. His hand lingers for a moment, pressed against his cheek, and Louis leans into it, his eyes fluttering closed, before he nods.

“The first one,” he admits, voice coming out hoarse, and Harry’s hand slides down his neck, fingers tapping a slow beat against his collarbone.

“It means the worst part is over,” Harry says, moving his hand so that it rests on Louis’ bare chest, right over his heart. They’re both quiet for a moment, and then Harry’s smile falters, only for a second, and he lets out a shaky breath. Louis can tell by the wrinkle between his eyebrows that they’re both thinking the same thing: there is no _better part_ when it comes to drug addiction.  

Harry’s hand moves back to cup Louis’ jaw, thumb rubbing gently against his cheek. “M’sorry. I didn’t—“

“It’s okay,” Louis says, but Harry’s frown stays put. Louis rolls his eyes, angling his face slightly so he can press a kiss to the pad of Harry’s thumb. “Harry, it’s okay. I knew—I know what this means, what it entails. I know it’s going to be hard, it’s going to suck for probably the rest of my life, but it’s the choice I made.”

“The choice I made you make,” Harry says, and Louis thinks it was probably supposed to be a joke, but it comes out choked.

Words escape him as Louis tries to think of what to say, because as much as he wants to reassure Harry that it was okay that Harry forced him into quitting, he can’t make himself. He leans in and presses his lips to Harry’s chest over his shirt, and then to his neck, and his jaw, before pulling away and pressing their foreheads together. “You did the right thing.”

Harry lets out an unsteady breath and looks up to lock eyes with Louis, his fingers finding Louis’ chain and pulling, slightly, tightening it around his neck. “I know, I know it was the right thing, and I don’t—even if you ended up hating me for it, but stayed sober, I’d still be happy. I—I could never regret it, you know? I’d rather have you hate me for the rest of your life than you love me while you drug yourself to death.”

The words hit Louis like a punch to the throat. “Right now,” he says when he’s regained the ability to speak, “I am sober, and I love you.” He leans in and presses their lips together, chastely, and counts to three, four, five before Harry stops allowing it and pulls away.

“Lou…” he whispers sadly.

“I know, it’s okay,” Louis says, smiling. “I’ll wait for you until you’re ready.”

Harry smiles at that, big and goofy: Louis’ favourite smile. “It’s not me who isn’t ready, Louis.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Louis says. “I’ll still wait.”

*

Louis finally ventures out of his room that afternoon while Harry is out organizing something for his upcoming tour.

He’s been eating mostly bland things, oatmeal and rice and fruit, things that won’t upset his stomach, but today he’s as hungry as he remembers being in his youth, when one serving fed three and sometimes more than that.

“Oh, Louis, darling,” a female voice says, and Louis looks up to find himself face to face with Anne. “Are you feeling any better? Those must have been some awful days you’ve just had.” She kisses his cheek before he can react, then places her hand on his shoulder. “Let me make you some tea, you must be starving. Haz and Gemma popped down to town to get some provisions for the weekend, so they’ll be back a little later than planned. Harry will be elated to see you’ve made it out of your room.”

It’s too much, all of a sudden; Louis can barely process the information. “Gemma is here?”

Anne nods. “Drove up with me last week, after Harry told us you two were going to be staying here. This house is absolutely wonderful. I thought Harry was playing it up to get us to come, but he wasn’t! It truly is beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Louis murmurs self-consciously, wondering if Harry told her the story behind it. “You didn’t have to—you know, I know you’re both busy—”

“Shush, you,” Anne says, her smile suddenly gone from her face. “Don’t be silly. Of course we had to.”

“I still don’t know if this is what I want,” he says, pulling at the skin around his fingernail, drawing blood, and Anne’s face melts instantly.

“Darling, honey, I don’t think wanting anything else really is an option anymore,” she says softly, and Louis’ feels his ribcage shrink around his lungs. “I can’t presume to know what it’s like to be in your shoes, or what led you to resort to those sort of things, and I can’t—and wouldn’t want to, anyway—tell you what to do. What I can tell you, though, is that you are an incredible young man, and it would be a shame to watch you waste away like that when you’ve got so much going for you.”

Louis feels tears start welling up and blinks them away, refusing to let himself cry in front of Anne.

“My last, and most selfish reason for being here and trying to help,” Anne says, and winks, even though her voice is serious, “is that I don’t think Harry would survive it, if anything happened to you.”

“Harry’s the strongest person I know,” Louis blurts out automatically. “He could survive anything.”

Anne smiles at him, full of warmth, and nods. “Maybe he could, yes. But I don’t think he would want to.”

*

Having Gemma and Anne around is surprisingly better than Louis expected. Anne brings him coffee on the mornings he can’t make himself get out of bed, and he has lunch with her and Gemma every day while Harry is out working. They don’t push him to talk, and they don’t say anything on the days that he stays locked up in his room, but they always set the radio on the station they know he likes when he’s with them, and they slip him books they think he might like on the days when he can’t make himself talk, and it’s nice.

Harry sleeps in his bed every night, even though he insists on keeping things exclusively friendly between them, and Louis gets to wake up to him every morning. He forgets, sometimes, in his sleep haze, that they’re just friends—for now, Harry had said one night, when Louis was still going through withdrawals and had tried to kiss Harry in the middle of a fight—and he has to catch himself before he does something stupid like kiss Harry or blow him in his sleep. He knows better than to fuck things up now.

Anne helps Louis cook while Harry is at a meeting the day before his birthday, and then the next day both she and Gemma make their excuses and disappear right after breakfast. Louis takes Harry down to the lake once they’re gone and they eat by the water.

“I can’t believe you actually made edible food,” Harry says around a mouthful of chicken.

“I had four sisters, Harold,” Louis replies and stabs Harry in the leg with a fork. “I can make a miracles happen with a can of creamed corn and enough imagination.”

“I’d rather not find out,” Harry says, and then he lies down on the blanket with his head propped against Louis’ legs, and he doesn’t say anything when Louis starts running his fingers through it.

“I like your hair like this,” Louis mentions absently as he begins braiding it. “Are you going to grow it out?”

Harry hums, eyes closed, and smiles in Louis’ direction. “I think so. I don’t know if they’ll let me, but. I’d like that.”

They make a mess eating Anne’s pie, and Harry makes a show of wiping himself on Louis’ shirt, forcing him to take it off. He doesn’t hide his eyes as they rake over Louis’ torso, smirking when Louis catches him staring, and Louis blushes self-consciously and angles his body away from him, trying to cover up the way his ribs are sticking out; he hasn’t been this skinny since he left Russia.

Despite trying not to get his hopes up, Louis still finds himself disappointed that night when they go to bed and Harry hasn’t kissed him. He knows it’ll take time, knows that unless he fucks up tremendously, it will happen eventually, but it still makes his chest grow tighter every time he thinks it’s about to happen and Harry pulls away from him.

“I had a great time today,” Harry whispers into his ear after they’ve both been quiet for a while. “Thank you.” He kisses the shell of Louis’ ear, and then the soft spot right behind it, then mouths at Louis’ neck, all the way towards his jaw. Louis aches to turn around and kiss him properly, but he’s terrified of moving and changing Harry’s mind, so he lets Harry kiss his neck until he goes completely still and pulls back, a moment later.

“Fuck—shit, I’m sorry. This isn’t fair on you,” Harry says, eyes wide and alarmed, and sits up on the bed.

“H, it’s fine. I don’t care—“

Harry shakes his head. “Maybe I should bunk with Gemma until—“

Louis sits up, heart stuck in his throat, and his hand goes up to Harry’s shoulder to stop him. “Don’t,” he begs, “I don’t—waking up alone—please, please stay.”

Harry nods, if a little stiffly, and he lets Louis guide him so they’re both lying down again, this time keeping more distance between them. It’s not ideal, but it will do.

*

Louis has been sober for two months when he decides to invite his family up to stay with them. “It’ll be good,” he tells Anne, who’s smiling with unease across from him in the kitchen, drinking her tea. “I bet they’ll love the house, the girls. Maybe he will, too.”

Anne doesn’t tell him it’s a bad idea, even though it’s written all over her face, and she promises to help with the cooking; Gemma starts making plans. He decides on Easter, because he doubts his father will make it across the ocean for a foreign holiday and he assumes it’ll be easier to win over his sisters if there’s sweets and presents involved.

It’s a bad idea—he knows it’s a bad idea the moment it sparks as an unwanted thought at the back of his head after too many sleepless hours—but he’s set on it as soon the words leave his mouth. It seems to be the general consensus that Louis seeing his asshole of a father for the first time in years while he’s still recovering is going to end in disaster, but no one tries to put a stop to it.

Harry’s the one to set it up, obviously, because Louis spends most of his time in bed, still, or locked away in the music room, and he doesn’t really think he can ask his father to come spend Easter with them.

“You’re sure this is what you want, right?” Harry asks once, after speaking with Troy over the phone to make the invitation, and Louis can’t bring himself to voice how he feels, so instead he nods and tries not to shiver when Harry lifts a hand to his cheek and rubs his thumb over his jawbone.

*

It goes as badly as Louis expects it to, and then some.

Louis hasn’t heard from Jay in months, but they’ve never kept in touch, so he didn’t think anything of it, not until the car Harry set up to bring them home from the airport arrives and only his dad and the girls step out.

Lottie is the one to deliver the news to him, tears welling up in her eyes as she tells him it was fast, and Louis locks himself up in his room for two hours before Anne finally convinces him to come out.

It doesn’t get better after that. Harry is distracted with the girls, and Gemma takes Lottie and Fizzy down to the lake for a moment, which means that no one is watching Louis after Anne and Troy get talking, and before he makes the decision to drink, he’s downed over half of the bottle of wine that Lottie brought, and his vision is a little blurred around the edges.

He knows, as soon as the effects start hitting him, that it was a bad idea, and that Harry is going to know. His heart starts racing, and he can feel sweat building on his forehead and shining over his cheekbones, and he wants to hit himself in the head with the empty bottle, because he was doing well. He hears the door closing behind him, and he panics, the bottle slipping from his fingers and shattering all around him on the floor.

“Harry. I’m sorry. I didn’t—I fucked up—”

“Why’s he here?”

Louis looks up and finds his dad leaned against the counter.

“Pardon?”

“That stage boy, Styles. They play them on the radio sometimes, his songs. What’s he doing here?”

“They’re staying here for a while—they’re friends. They’re helping me get settled.”

“You know what they say about him, don’t you?” Troy says, words tinged with disgust, and Louis’ mind flashes to a backstage talk, years and years before.

He can feel his face tightening, anger simmering in his stomach. “Don’t you dare talk about him, not after all he’s done for me, and what little you have.”

Rage flashes over Troy’s face, and before Louis knows what’s happening, pain erupts all over his cheek, and he stumbles backwards, stepping on a particularly sharp piece of glass, which pierces through his shoe. “I always knew you were a faggot,” Troy says, voice filled with venom, and he takes a step toward Louis.

A hand grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him back, and suddenly Harry is standing in front of Troy, towering over him. “I think you should leave,” Harry says, voice barely controlled, and he shoves Troy away from him and moves to Louis, eyes widening when he takes him in.

“I’m sorry,” Louis says, and Harry wraps his arms around him. “I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to—“

Harry tells him over and over that it’s fine; he doesn’t pull away even as he sniffs Louis’ breath, and he only tightens his embrace when Louis starts crying silently against his chest.

Lottie pops into the room for a moment to kiss Louis’ cheek and say goodbye, and by the time Anne has cleaned the cut on his foot and they’ve iced his face, everyone is gone.

That night, Harry curls around him and puts his arm over Louis’ chest, pulling him closer until their bodies are flush together, and he shushes Louis every time he starts apologizing again. Louis’ chest still feels like it’s been hollowed out, but Harry’s arms are solid and protective around him and it helps Louis calm down enough to sleep for a bit.

He wakes up in a panic at three a.m., sweat dripping down his face and hands shaking in a way they haven’t in awhile, and Harry gets up and sits in the bathroom with him while he tries to calm down.

“I’m sorry I’m so fucked up,” Louis says, when his hands are shaking too much and Harry has to help him get into clean clothes. “I’m trying—I’m trying not to be.”

Harry hums, kisses his shoulder and says, “That’s all that matters, babe,” and the next time Louis falls asleep, it’s with his head on Harry’s lap and Harry’s fingers carding through his hair.

*

Things are easy and quiet for a while after that. They spend spring hiding out in Louis’ house, playing board games and cleaning out the yard, writing songs that will probably never be recorded just for the sake of writing them.

Louis stops expecting Harry to kiss him. Harry doesn’t get any less tactile, but Louis learns to live with it, and things get better. His cravings get less intense, and slowly his thoughts start filling with other things.

Harry buys him random records he finds when he goes to the city, and Gemma leaves books by his bedroom door every other day. Anne teaches him how to bake pies, and then bread, and then croissants, and they cook dinner together every night; Gemma sets the table and Harry always does the dishes, with Louis next to him helping him dry, and it’s so much like the life Louis always hoped for but never thought he would get that his chest aches, sometimes.

On a particularly warm day in June, right before Harry has to leave for his tour, Louis has his first beer since the Easter fiasco. He drinks half of it casually, taking small sips as he watches Anne and Harry argue over the proper way to open a wine bottle, and then suddenly he’s taking gulps, not breathing between them. He drops the bottle like it burns and gets up immediately, ignoring the spill and the clatter it makes, then runs to the kitchen sink to be sick. He gives up on drinking at all after that.

*

It’s August, and Harry has been back for a week, when Louis says he would like to start playing shows again. “Maybe not a full tour,” he says, eyeing Harry nervously, “but a few small gigs, here and there. Start getting used to it again.”

Harry purses his lips and stares at Louis for what feels like an eternity. “If you think you’re ready, Lou, then I think you should.”

“Will you come with me, then?” he asks hopefully, “for old time’s sake?”

“Always,” Harry says, and takes Louis’ hand in his, not letting go even when Gemma and Anne walk into the room.

Louis tries not to, but he still spends the rest of the day wondering if this was what Harry was waiting for, if it means that he finally thinks Louis is ready for _them_. He doesn’t want to ask Harry, and he can’t bring it up with Anne or Gemma, so instead he obsesses about it, deliberating over whether or not he should make a move on Harry now. He wonders if maybe they need to talk about it, first, but he can’t bring himself to say anything.

“I’m sorry about the house thing, by the way,” he says, as casually as he can, two nights later, while we’re both in the sitting room watching Bonanza. He watches with pleasure as Harry’s hand freezes over the popcorn bowl, then retreats slowly back to his lap as his head snaps towards Louis.

“I thought you were going to pretend that never happened,” Harry says after a moment, and Louis sighs. “It’s sort of become your signature with the years.”

The words are sharp and bitter, and they punch the air out of Louis’ lungs. He leans back against the sofa and closes his eyes, feels time rewinding around him as he goes back to step one. “Shit.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispers a moment later, “that was unfair of me.”

“Doesn’t make it any less true, though.”

Harry shoots him an incredulous look, then smiles. “When did you get so self aware?”

Louis shrugs. “Had a lot of time to think.”

“All those dark, cold days you spent at Folsom, huh?” Harry says; he pokes him with his toe, and Louis squirms away.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about the house. ‘Bout everything, really. But I got—I convinced myself it was the right thing. I thought once you saw it, you would get it, get _me_. I didn’t realize I was projecting my dreams over yours.”

Harry looks shocked, only for a moment, and then he lets out a laugh and shoves Louis. “You fucking _asshole_ . Do you know how hard it was to say no to this stupid, perfect house? My _dream_ house.”

“I thought you said—“

Harry shakes his head, his shoulders shaking slightly as he laughs quietly. “Of course I said I hated it, Louis, I was pissed at you! What you did was beyond stupid.”

“But you liked it,” Louis says, goading, a smirk playing at the corners of his lips.

“I told you what my dream house was and you went and bought it, Louis,” Harry says, and it sounds like both accusation and praise.

“I wanted to do something nice for you. I wanted you—I wanted you to have something nice.”

“I have plenty of nice things, Louis. I was a child star.”

“Not as nice as this house,” Louis says, smirking, and then, “you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Harry’s eyes soften as they meet Louis’ and he smiles, reaching to take hold of Louis’ chain, the one that once belonged to him, and tug until they’re only inches apart.

“Well, you know,” Louis says, waggling his eyebrows, “offer still stands, if you still want it.”

Harry laughs again, shaking his head incredulously. “Maybe one day.”

“That’s alright,” Louis says, shrugging. “I’ll wear you down eventually.”

“Okay,” Harry says, and kisses him.

*


	10. EPILOGUE

It’s January, and Louis is on stage.

They’ve been on tour for two weeks, and Louis still hasn’t gotten used to the sea of faces staring up at him from the crowd, all of them here just for him. He remembers loving the feeling, at some point, but now it just leaves him in awe.

Harry’s been unofficially moved in for almost two months now, and Louis wakes up every morning in disbelief that this wonderful boy has allowed him to share a life with him, that he gets to wake up to him every day for the rest of his life.

Being on stage right now feels a little bit like that.

They’re in Boston, he’s about to play “Make This Feel Like Home” for the first time, and Harry is nowhere to be seen. It’s Louis’ last song, and no one is coming on after him; if this were a normal show, he would just play it and call it a night, exhausted after his set, but he has no choice but to stall tonight. He wants Harry to see this.

“You know folks,” he says into the microphone, “I used to think of this place as my home, once upon a time. Only spent a couple nights here, but it made an impression on me. Best days of my life. _Oh_ , and the nights.” The crowd goes wild, and Louis grins, eyes still scanning the crowd for Harry.

“Changed my life, that trip. Made me a lover of the North again, when I’d been rooted down South for so long. I found my home here, you know?” The cheers are louder this time, and they ring in Louis’ ears. He keeps his eyes on the crowd, on the front left where his friends normally stand: Niall’s there, and Carl, both holding pints in their hands and grinning madly at him, but there’s no sign of Harry.

“It took me a long time to realize what this place meant to me, and _why_ , and once I figured it out, it took me even longer to get my act together. Love makes you do crazy things, folks, and I’ve done them all.”

Niall laughs at him and points to the right, and when Louis follows his movement his eyes, he finds Harry, perched on the side of the stage, looking at him.

“Thank you, Boston, for bringing the love of my life to me, back then and now. A home can be a city, a hotel room, a song. For me, it’s a cabin in the woods and the person who’s held my heart since the first time we kissed. I’m hoping that today is the day I’m finally able to have them both.”

His fingers close against the key he’s held in his pocket since the morning.

“Wish me luck, y’all. This song is for the love of my life. Have a good night.”

 

*

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS FOR READING FOLKS! 
> 
> <3
> 
> pls leave a comment i live for feedback <3 <3 <3


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